Methodology to select a suitable site on which to install and operate a Wave Energy Converter

This paper presents a methodology for identifying the most suitable place, based on some criteria, in which to install and operate a Wave Energy Converter (WEC), that is an electricity generator that exploits the wave motion of the sea. The methodology consists in the identification of a not small number of alternatives (the possible sites in which to place the WEC), the evaluation of these on a set of heterogeneous criteria (criteria on the resource to be exploited but also strategic and cost criteria) and finally the creation of one or more final rankings that order the selected alternatives in a ranking based on their performance on the criteria through the use of one or more Multi Criteria Decision Methods (MCDMs). The MCDMs used are the Simple Multi Attribute Rating Technique (SMART) and the Preference Ranking Organization Method for Enrichment of Evaluations (PROMETHEE). In addition to the MCDMs, a geographic information system (GIS) was used to organically organize the evaluations of the alternatives on the criteria. The main result of the set methodology consists in the identification of a small set of alternatives classified as the best after the application of the MCDMs.