An Extended VIKOR-Based Approach for Pumped Hydro Energy Storage Plant Site Selection with Heterogeneous Information

The selection of a desirable site for constructing a pumped hydro energy storage plant (PHESP) plays a vital important role in the whole life cycle. However, little research has been done on the site selection of PHESP, which affects the rapid development of PHESP. Therefore, this paper aims to select the most ideal PHESP site from numerous candidate alternatives using the multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) technique. Firstly, a comprehensive evaluation criteria system is established for the first time. Then, considering quantitative and qualitative criteria coexist in this system, multiple types of representations, including crisp numerical values (CNVs), triangular intuitionistic fuzzy numbers (TIFNs), and 2-dimension uncertain linguistic variables (2DULVs), are employed to deal with heterogeneous criteria information. To determine the weight of criteria and fully take the preference of the decision makers (DMs) into account, the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method is applied for criteria weighting. After that, an extended Vlsekriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje (VIKOR) method is utilized to provide compromise solutions for the PHESP site considering such heterogeneous information. At last, the proposed model is then applied in a case study of Zhejiang province, China to illustrate its practicality and efficiency. The result shows the Changlongshan should be selected as the optimal PHESP.