A Novel Method for Electric Energy Substitution Technology Evaluation Based on the Cloud-TOPSIS Method

In order to enable effective assessment of the development factors and benefits of various electric energy substitution technologies, and provide clear goals and reasonable development directions for the development of electric energy substitution technologies at the county level, it is necessary to establish a comprehensive, universally applicable, and rational indicator system and method for selecting electric energy substitution technologies. In this paper, a method for electric energy substitution technologies selection based on the cloud theory and the improved technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) method is proposed. Firstly, based on the investigation of the county’s energy consumption market, the selection indicators for electric energy substitution technologies are constructed. Secondly, considering the fuzziness of different indicator weights in the process of selecting electric energy substitution technologies, the reverse cloud combination weight method is proposed to achieve the fuzzy dynamic description of indicator weights. Finally, based on the TOPSIS model and cloud model calculations, a comprehensive cloud model of weighting for electric energy substitution technologies is obtained, and the cloud distance is used to replace the traditional Euclidean distance, thereby achieving the comparison and selection of electric energy substitution technologies. The results of the case study verify the effectiveness of the proposed method.