Site Selection and Economic Evaluation of Hybrid Offshore Solar and Wind Power Plants Based on GIS-MCDM

Hybrid offshore wind and solar power plant (HOSWPP) site selection faces three main issues: an incomplete indicator system, limited reliability of evaluation methods, and a weak linkage with economic evaluation. To address these issues, a comprehensive decision-making framework was established, based on geographic information system (GIS), multi-criteria decision making (MCDM), and life-cycle economic evaluation. The group fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (GFAHP) was used to improve the reliability of criteria weights. The preference ranking organization method for enrichment evaluations Ⅱ (PROMETHEE Ⅱ) was applied to evaluate alternatives. Meanwhile, life-cycle economic evaluation was conducted for the verification of the site selection results, from the perspective of economic feasibility. It was also used for support of subsequent project planning, design, and operation. Finally, the framework was applied to the offshore area of Shandong Province, China. The results show that approximately 38.15% (57 783.69 km²) of the area had potential for HOSWPP deployment, and the development sequence of 20 alternatives was determined. Among them, alternative A11 performed best, with a levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) of 0.569 7 yuan/(kW·h). These results provide a theoretical reference for the efficient deployment of HOSWPP.