Small Hydropower Site Selection Using Spatial-Fuzzy Expert System: A Case Study

Selecting the appropriate small hydropower project site in which to invest is a critical task involving different factors and policies. Small hydropower projects are emerging as a solution for sustainable, green, environment friendly and long term, cost effective source of renewable energy in India for the future. Hence such decision-making can be viewed as a multiple criteria analysis problem with correlating criteria and alternatives. This task should take into consideration several conflicting aspects because of the increasing complexity of the social, technological, environmental, and economic factors. Traditional single criteria decision-making approaches cannot handle the complexity of such systems. Multi criteria methods (MCDA) provide a better and flexible tool. This paper aims to evaluate applicability of multi criteria decision aid to decision makers during the small hydropower project planning and development. To the best of the author‟s knowledge this novel approach for application of MCDA to small hydropower project planning and development scenario is absent in renewable energy literatures due to its assessment complexity.