Assessment of the Potential of Offshore Wind Energy in Taiwan using Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process

In this paper, the application of the Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (Fuzzy AHP) combined with a set of criteria analysis for the selection of appropriate sites for the development offshore wind energy in Taiwan is presented. The Fuzzy AHP was first conducted to rank the importance and identify the key factors of offshore wind energy successfully. From the numerical results, eight key factors that must be considered in the site selection of offshore wind energy system in Taiwan were obtained by using Fuzzy AHP model. They are: wind power, earthquakes, land use, shore type, typhoon, distance to shoreline, flight safety and water depth. Based on these factors, a set of criteria for the selection of sites for offshore wind farms was also established using five different sites in Taiwan. From the assessment results, it was found that Changhua coastal region is an appropriate site for offshore wind energy in Taiwan.

This creative work has been published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC-BY 4.0) license which allows copying, and redistribution as well as adaptation of the original work provided appropriate credit is given to the original author and the conditions of the license are met.