Multicriteria comprehensive evaluation framework for industrial park-level distributed energy system considering weights uncertainties

Distributed energy systems have been proved as an effective solution to energy depletion and environmental pollution. However, the decision making on the distributed energy system planning is difficult because multiple evaluative criteria and alternative systems are involved in the evaluation process. The study, therefore, is aimed at proposing a multicriteria comprehensive evaluation framework for the DES plan. First, the evaluation criteria system is established to offer a fundamental premise for the fair evaluation, based on numerous researches on DES evaluation. In the established criteria system, technology, economy, environment, and socio-politics are scrutinized. Second, the subjective weights, objective weights and the comprehensive weights of criteria are determined by the fuzzy analytic hierarchy process method, Shannon entropy method and a comprehensive method, respectively. The fuzzy analytic hierarchy process method combines the triangular fuzzy number and the analytic hierarchy process method. The triangular fuzzy number incorporates the decision-makers’ uncertainties during evaluation and thus improves the efficiency of decision making. The comprehensive method combines the single-objective optimization and Jaynes’ maximal entropy principle method. Third, the grey relational analysis method is used to achieve the alternatives’ ranking with and without preferences. The proposed framework is employed to evaluate various distributed energy systems for a cultural industrial park in Changsha of China. Results show that the system that integrates water source heat pump with the improved Combined Cooling, Heating & Power (WSHP + CCHP) is optimal in the integrated evaluation and the evaluations with technology priority and economy priority, with a grey relational degree of 0.7475, 0.7239, and 0.5764, respectively. The three systems that exploit renewable energy, i.e. the system that integrates ground source heat pump with the improved Combined Cooling, Heating & Power (GSHP + CCHP), the system that integrates water source heat pump with the improved Combined Cooling, Heating & Power (WSHP + CCHP) and the system that ground source heat pump with water source heat pump (GSHP + WSHP), have a better ranking than the other two systems in the evaluation with socio-political priority. The case study of the park demonstrates the proposed framework’s feasibility of multi-criteria comprehensive evaluation for industrial park-level distributed energy systems. The study hopes to provide some references for the multicriteria evaluation of distributed energy systems.