Evaluation of the Significant Renewable Energy Resources in India Using Analytical Hierarchy Process

A developing country like India encounters challenges like exponential increase in population and rising per capita energy consumption which demands an optimum usage of available energy resources. Currently the energy demands are mostly met by non renewable energy sources, a system that puts a tremendous pressure on the economy and causes a serious threat to the environment, flora and fauna. Hence, the government and other state nodal agencies in India are taking initiatives to promote the use of the renewable energy sources. In the present study, an attempt has been made to arrive at the overall priorities of the renewable energy sources available in India using Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP). The important parameters like Cost, Efficiency, Environmental impact, Installed capacity, Estimated potential, Reliability and Social acceptance are considered in this model to identify and rank the renewable energy sources like solar, wind and biomass. A survey based on Delphi technique was conducted in the previous work from which the scales for the aforementioned parameters are fixed. For each attribute, and each pair of alternatives, the outcome of the survey specifies their preference in the form of a fraction between 1/9 and 9. The results show the order of merit as Wind energy (0.501), Biomass energy (0.288), and Solar energy (0.2056) with respect to Indian policies and conditions to meet the future energy demand.