Review of Multi-Criteria Decision Making Methods for Renewable Energy Planning

Nowadays, policy makers have become more aware of renewable energy advantages. From national and regional decision maker's points of view, the first priority is preparing comprehensive energy planning and the second is determination of renewable segments in total energy production plan. For selection, different alternatives among renewable energy, environmental, economical, technical, and social criteria were combined. As a matter of fact, that multi-criteria decision making atmosphere can be shown. In recent years, a number of articles on the subject of multi-criteriadecision making methods were published. Given that, it is not possible for everyone to study the whole of related articles in one hand, and on the other hand selection of an appropriate method always needs deep analysis, this paper aims to compare different methods in order to achieve a general overview of the applications of MCDM methods in renewable energy planning. At the end of this study, PROMETHEE is proposed as the most appropriate method for renewable energy planning.