Photovoltaic Technology Selection Using Analytical Hierarchical Process

Abstract

While suffering from looming power crisis, high level of annual average solar irradiance makes the Pakistan ideally suitable for photovoltaic technologies. Deciding for a photovoltaic (PV) technology definitely requires a comprehensive research because output characteristics of each of the five major PV technologies depend on different technical as well as environmental characteristics (including solar irradiation, cell’s temperature, humidity, dust accumulation, angle of incidence, solar spectrum, wind’s speed, wind’s direction, and shading). Only one technology can perform best in a specific geographical location. In addition, before installing any PV generation facility, preferences of the decisionmaking authority and the attributes of the selected installation area must be considered. To address such a complex decision making problem, PV technology alternatives are ranked by use of an analytical hierarchical process (AHP) in which all the decisionmaking factors are arranged in a hierarchical tree showing their level of influence in the decisionmaking. A PV technology for installation is devised after a detailed pairwise comparison, for a specific location of Pakistan with respect to (w.r.t.) the government’s perspective. Useful guidelines with detailed comparison among five major PV technologies make this work a reference guide for the policy making institutes in particular and customer/entrepreneur in general.