Biogas Power Plant Site Selection with Multi-Criteria Decision-Making Methods: An Example for Polatlı in Ankara

The need for energy is also increasing due to reasons such as industrialization, developing society, increasing needs, rapidly developing technology, and increased production. Increasing energy need has also increased energy use, and this has led to an increase in waste. Among these wastes, the amount of animal waste has an important place. The product resulting from the conversion of animal waste into energy is called biogas. In biogas power plants, energy is obtained by processing animal waste. It is important to construct the biogas power plant in a suitable location for more efficient energy production. This study focused on the construction of a biogas power plant in the Polatlı district of Ankara. In this study, multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) methods were used for power plant location selection. A set of criteria has been proposed for factors affecting power plant construction. Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) is used to weight the criteria and Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) method is used to rank alternative power plant locations. The analyzes have shown that the distance criterion from the settlement is the most important criterion. In addition, as a result of the analysis, it has been determined that the establishment of a biogas power plant in the Sakarya region would be the most suitable alternative.