Energy is the major contributing factor for the growth of a country. There are various conventional sources of energy such as coal, nuclear, and hydro energy. These sources have advantages as well as disadvantages in terms of environmental impact. The non-conventional renewable source of energy, such as solar, wind, geothermal and small hydro has less environmental impact and being considered clean source of energy. Small hydro power has negligible environmental impact as compared to other sources of energy. This study has been attempted to evaluate the operation and parameters of small hydro power plant by using the multi attribute decision making (MADM) approach. Parameters considered are head, discharge, head loss, efficiency, number of turbines, guide vane opening and penstock diameter. An attribute selection procedure and mathematical model has been described with the help of a case study. The proposed model has been validated using TOPSIS scheme. The results show that MADM can be efficiently used for preparing and retrieving database of other power plants. It can be helpful in providing coding scheme to produce electronic database of globally operational power plants.
Operation parameters, Small hydro power, MADM, TOPSIS
