Renewable Energy, Vol.117, 434-446, 2018
Innovative ANP model to prioritization of PV/T systems based on cost and efficiency approaches: With a case study for Asia
Photovoltaic thermal system (PV/T) is one of the promising technologies in renewable energy field. It uses sunlight and simultaneously produces electricity and hot fluid for thermal applications. PV/T system is composed of different elements that can affect both efficiency and cost of the system. A designer can introduce various systems with different combinations of elements. In this paper a multi-attribute decision making (MADM) model is designed to determine influence of each element type on the efficiency and cost. A multilevel network is developed and analytical network process (ANP) is employed. Two main criteria are system efficiency and initial cost of production. The efficiency criterion has 7 sub criteria and any of them has some sub-sub-criteria. There are also sub-sub-sub-criteria level in some parts of the network. Importance of cost to efficiency depends on the decision maker's demands, so it has been assumed that their importance is equal. All the other network data has been gathered from relevant scientific references. The demonstrated model introduces a screening tool to choose among different PV/T systems. Eleven PV/T systems constructed in Asia are considered as alternatives and the best of them and an ideal alternative are introduced. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.