Conference on Environmental Science and Technology

Criteria weighting methods contribute significantly in decision making processes. Criteria-weighting procedures include two essential categories: objective and subjective strategies. Prior to setting up the weights of the criteria, subjective methods request that decision-makers supply preparatory information based on their skills, expertise and judgments. On the other hand, objective strategies eliminate any conceivable subjectivity-related bias, boosting objectivity, as they do not depend on the decision-makers' judgment or any earlier information and just assess how the information is organized within the assessment matrix to set up the weights. Numerous criteria can affect the site selection of a renewable energy sources (RES) project, and the application of multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) methodologies is a prerequisite in assessing the criteria involved in the deployment of RES projects. The aim of this study is to investigate how the use of different subjective and objective weighting strategies contributes to the decision on solar farm siting issues, with the island of Rhodes (Greece) being used as an example. Five assessment criteria (Distance from Residential Areas (AC1), Distance from Road Network (AC2), Distance from the Existing High Voltage Electricity Grid (AC3), Solar Radiation (AC4), Installation Site Area Limitations (AC5)) are included in the analysis. Four subjective methods (Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), Rank Order Centroid (ROC), SIMOS, Best – Worst method (BWM)) and two objective methods (CRiteria Importance Through Inter-criteria Correlation (CRITIC) and Entropy Weight Method (EWM) are applied to compute the weights of the selected assessment criteria. Nine eligible sites of solar farm siting in the island of Rhodes island are evaluated and ranked using the Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS). The results showed that the assessment criteria obtained the same ranking in all subjective methods. Regarding the objective methods, three (3) out of five (5) criteria obtained the same position in ranking. The best alternative rated according to AHP-TOPSIS, ROC-TOPSIS, SIMOS-TOPSIS, BWM-TOPSIS and Entropy-TOPSIS is site (S4) in the Central-West part of the island, whereas according to CRITIC-TOPSIS is the site (S8) in the North-East part of the island. In energy siting challenges, using multiple MCDM methods at the same time could be beneficial since it can contribute to choosing the most sustainable sites, avoiding the drawbacks and utilizing the benefits of each method.