A Novel Multi-Criteria Decision-Making Method for Wind Power Plant Repowering

Abstract

In recent decades, there have been alterations in the rhythm of nature mainly due to the climate change. In parallel, there has been an increasing social awareness regarding decarbonization and renewable promotion. Most of governments have then included new policies and financing for renewable integration into different sector. In fact, the deployment of technologies based on renewable energies for the generation of electricity is a key factor in the current energy transformation. It is estimated to add approximately 305 GW per year between 2021 and 2026 to the global capacity of renewable generation electricity. Among the different resources, the wind sector par-ticipation, both onshore and offshore, plays a crucial role in the generation of electricity from renewables; expecting that, by the year 2050, there will be more than 6,000 GW of installed global capacity. However, the useful life of many wind power plants is coming to the end. Subsequently, many national power systems will be faced in the coming years with the decision to repower or partially or totally dismantle their wind turbines. This work proposes an updated methodology to determine the feasibility of repowering wind installations. A complex network of factors usually considered in decision-making processes are selected: cli-matic, technological, environmental, social and economic. These factors are then analyzed and optimized under different multi-criteria evaluation method approaches.