A Multi-Criteria Decision Making Procedure for the Analysis of an Energy System

In the course of improving and/or designing an energy system,either purely economic criteria,although theoverriding criteria,or purely energy-based criteria,although the emphasized criteria,can not separately handlereal-world situations in a satisfactory manner.The economic effectiveness and the energy efficiency mustbe considered simultaneously to demonstrate the conflicting and non-commensurable characteristics of thesemultiple criteria.An iterative and interactive approach to formulating and solving non-linear multi-criteria decision makingproblems for the analysis of an energy system is proposed.It allows the decision maker(DM)to learn fromthe available information and dynamically change his mind.Criterion functions can be treated as objectivefunctions,as constraints or as something in between by the DM.After a series of iterations and interactiveprocedures,a preferred solution can be made among the non-inferior sets considering thermodynamic criteriaand economic criteria simultaneously.A simple example for design of a heat exchanger is used to illustrate theprocedure.