A Study of power plant selection process - A graph theoretic approach

Abstract

A power plant is an industrial facility that is utilized for the generation of electrical power on a large scale. Selecting the best suitable power plant depends upon a number of various factors such as cost, fuel, location, and availability of a water source. It is very important to select an appropriate power plant to be set-up taking all these parameters and their sub-factors into consideration. In this paper, a graph-theoretic approach has been used to select the best power plant among three of the major power plants which include hydroelectric power plant, thermal power plant, and nuclear power plant. A fishbone diagram is used to represent the factors and the cofactors affecting the power plant selection process. A digraph characteristic is sketched between the factors and cofactors which are involved in the selection of the power plant. The interdependency of the factors and their inheritances are identified and they have been represented by using numerical values in this work. These values are further represented in a matrix form for the above stated three power plants. An example is made to illustrate the use of this technique in decision-making problems with different alternatives and multiple interdependent factors.