Development of a best-worst method based MCDM approach for solar power plant location selection: an application to Tunceli, Turkey

Solar energy stands out with its increasing potential in the world. The decision to choose the location of a solar power plant is very important due to the investment return. In this study, a solar power plant site selection for Tunceli, Turkey is studied with a two-stage multi-criteria decision-making approach. In the first stage, the importance levels of the determined nine factors are obtained by the best-worst method (BWM). In the second stage, the most appropriate site is selected among the eight districts of Tunceli. As a result of the first stage, solar and fault line emerged as the most and least important factor, respectively. The second stage showed that Pertek district is the most suitable place. A comparative framework has been created including five different MCDM methods, which strengthens the final decision's accuracy and reveals whether each method's results are correlated.