Biomass power generation fuel procurement and storage modes evaluation: A case study in Jilin.

Biomass energy has extensive application foreground in power generation because of its economic and social benefits. Aiming at selecting the best biomass fuel procurement and storage modes in Jilin province, this paper proposes an evaluation model with linguistic hesitant fuzzy sets (LHFSs), which is good at expressing the hesitancy, inconsistency and uncertainty of subjective evaluation information. Based on cloud model and three entropy principle, the transformation between linguistic hesitant fuzzy sets and comprehensive cloud model is realized. In order to eliminate interdependency among criterion, a new Choquet integral aggregation operator based on the Sigmoid function is proposed. According to the expectation values, the ranking result of aggregated LHFSs is obtained. At last, an illustrative example of modes evaluation in Jilin province is taken in the present study to make the proposed method comprehensible. The result shows that mode 3: farmer + middleman + third-party logistics + power plant, is the most reasonable mode for Jilin biomass energy development. From the perspective of supply chain, middlemen and third party logistics can reduce the procurement and transportation cost in the supply chain, which are two bigger influential factors of fuel cost. Middlemen are not only a bridge between plants and farmers, but also the operator in the supply chain. Through the analysis of the result, suggestions from the perspective of power plants and the government are given. • Linguistic hesitant fuzzy sets are used for evaluating biomass power generation fuel procurement and storage modes. • A multi-criteria decision-making method based on cloud model and Choquet integral is proposed. • A new linguistic hesitant fuzzy aggregation operator based on Choquet integral and the Sigmoid function is presented. • "farmer, middleman, third-party logistics and power plant" is the best mode for Jilin biomass power development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]