Finding the Best Station in Canada for Using Residential Scale Solar Heating: A Multicriteria Decision-Making Analysis

Abstract

Solar energy-based heating systems, which are capable of providing space heating as well as domestic hot water heating, are a promising alternative to conventional systems to achieve the status of reducing fossil energy consumption in residential buildings. Determining how suitable such systems are performing in Canada and which station is the most suitable in terms of energy-economic-environmental parameters are issues that have not been investigated so far. Considering that such results are very important for energy decision-makers and investors, therefore, in the present work, the provision of space heating and hot water heating on a residential scale in 10 Canadian provinces was done by Valentin TSOL v2021 R3 software. Then nine software output parameters along with three parameters of land price, the population of each station, and the natural disaster index were weighted using the AHP method. Finally, the results of the stations were ranked using five MCDM methods including AHP, TOPSIS, WASPAS, CRITIC, and GRA. The results of numerical simulations showed that the CO₂ emissions avoided parameter has the most weight, and the parameters solar contribution to DHW and boiler energy to DHW has the least weight. Also, the final ranking of each station showed that the most suitable station is Regina and the most unsuitable station is Victoria. By examining and analyzing the results, it was found that only based on the outputs of the Valentin TSOL v2021 R3 software, it is not possible to comment on finding appropriate and inappropriate stations, and the necessity of using ranking methods was observed more than before.