An Effective Analysis of Risk Assessment and Mitigation Strategies of Photovoltaic Power Plants Based on Real Data: Strategies, Challenges, Perspectives, and Sustainability

Abstract

Due to the extensive usage of fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and gas, the energy crisis and environmental pollution issues have garnered global attention, making the creation of clean, renewable energy an unavoidable option. Solar photovoltaic energy production is regarded as one of the most promising technologies owing to its safety, dependability, and lack of environmental impact. However, the adoption of photovoltaic systems comes with some risks that may affect their deployment. This paper examines the risks of sustainable photovoltaic power plants through a realistic case study. A comprehensive approach is presented through which consultants can use linguistic variables to express their opinions about risks, priorities, and strategies for dealing with them. Evaluating and prioritizing risk assessment is a complex task that requires consideration of multiple criteria. Therefore, this paper proposes a hybrid multicriteria decision-making (MCDM) approach to deal with risks and their priorities. The risks of five aspects of sustainability were considered: the economic, technical, institutional, social, and environmental aspects. The developed approach consists of two decision-making methods: the criteria importance through intercriteria correlation (CRITIC) method, which is used to determine the weights of the criteria, and the evaluation based on distance from average solution (EDAS) method, which is used to arrange risks according to their priorities. The developed approach is performed in a neutrosophic environment and uses type-2 neutrosophic numbers (T2NN) to address uncertainty. Also, the paper adopts a developed model to determine the consultants’ reputation weights instead of assuming them. In addition, the model was applied to classify the risks of each aspect of sustainability into three levels, which are high, medium, and normal risks. The results indicate that 52% of the risks in all aspects are high risks, 36% are medium risks, and 12% are usual risks. Also, sensitivity analysis was performed to prove the correctness and stability of the developed approach with differences in weights.