TrPFZ2TLV-Based Decision-Making Frameworks for Site Selection of Large-Scale Solar Photovoltaic Power Plants

Due to the increased investments in the photovoltaic sector, site selection for the large-scale photovoltaic power plants (LPPP) based on sustainability perspectives has become a critical issue for project planning. To cope with this problem, multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) frameworks are proposed concerning independent and correlated relationships among attributes under a novel fuzzy environment of trapezoidal Pythagorean fuzzy Z 2-tuple linguistic variables (TrPFZ2TLVs). Firstly, to reflect ambiguity and reliability for evaluation, TrPFZ2TLV is defined along with its interactive operation rules, distance measures and a method of unifying multi-granularity TrPFZ2TLVs. Afterwards, evaluation frameworks are proposed based on interactive aggregation operators with the weights of criteria already known, among which a hybrid aggregation operator is proposed that could weigh both TrPFZ2TLV themselves and their ordered positions when the attributes’ relationships approximate independence, and a power aggregation operator is developed to eliminate extreme or biased evaluation values when the correlations among criteria are emphasized. Finally, a case study is provided before comparative and sensitivity analysis are carried out to verify their validity and reliability. In terms of practical applications, practitioners can select appropriate frameworks for evaluation based on the desired effects of data processing outputs, as well as the assumption of correlation among criteria.