Prioritizing Effective Factors for Construction of Wind Power Plant Using Comparative Comparisons of AHP, TOPSIS and Maximin (Case Study: Sabzevar County)

Proper climatic conditions in Sabzevar, a city in Khorasan Razavi province, northeast of Iran, have created a very high potential for wind power generation systems. In this research, prioritizing the effective factors for the construction of wind power plant was done by three comparative methods of analytic hierarchy process (AHP), Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) and Maximin.
In this study the criteria determined and defined by using the Delphi technique and completing 45 questionnaire. This method was compared to the survey and identification of the required spatial criteria in the potential of the wind power plant. All criteria categorized in 5 sections of geology, ecology, socioeconomics, geometry and climate as main environmental factors, as well as 17 sub-criteria of distance from epicentre of earthquake, faults, protected areas, land use, rivers, roads, power grid, city/village, slope and elevation, temperature, wind speed, wind density, wind conjunction and dominant wind speed were identified as the location sub-criteria.
Ranking was based on three methods of AHP, TOPSIS and Maximin. The first priority was the climate and wind speed factor with a score of 0.355, 3.771, and 24.552, respectively.
The results of the AHP hierarchy process were different with the two other methods results. In this regard, the AHP method was more suitable due to the interference effect of the other factors.