Combined multi-criteria decision aid and integer programming approach for project selection in the electricity market

The European policy target of substantially increasing the share of renewable energy in electricity generation, in combination with national subsidization support schemes, has strongly motivated private investors towards this business sector. In Greece, this interest is particularly apparent in the case of wind energy exploitation, due to a favourable legislative framework and the important wind potential available in several Greek regions. In such endowed regions, a very high number of applications were submitted to the competent authority, most of which compete for the same most attractive (windy) sites. The selection among these applications is a multicriteria problem that has been solved with the support of a Decision-Aid tool combining the multicriteria classification method ELECTRE-TRI with Integer Linear Programming. The developed approach takes into account both the performances of the applications to the evaluation criteria as well as a number of technical and policy constraints.