Assessment of PV potential in mountain areas using four muti-criteria decision methods

Abstract

In this study, Yongren County, Yunnan Province was selected as the study case, and a photovoltaic (PV) power potential assessment system based on Geographic Information System (GIS) and Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) method was used to calculate the PV power potential in mountainous areas and to estimate the levelized cost of electricity for PV power generation in mountainous areas. The results show that the ordinal priority approach (OPA)-MCDM is the best among the four different multi-criteria decision methods, and the selected optimal PV construction area fits well with the existing PV facilities, which demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed method. The PV power generation potential is about 7861.953 million kwh, and the levelized cost of electricity is 0.3963 RMB/kWh. The estimated annual power generation capacity can meet the social power demand of Chuxiong Prefecture.