Community Wind Farm Site Selection

Harbourfield Community Energy Co-op (fictional) surveyed a twelve-member expert panel to evaluate three candidate sites. Synthetic demonstration decision for the decisionpoint.io blog — sites and respondents are fictional.

A public Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) decision built with decisionpoint.io: 4 criteria, 3 alternatives, and 206 pairwise judgments.

Overall ranking

  1. Carrigbeg Upland — 39.0%
  2. Slievebawn Common — 30.9%
  3. Knockmore Ridge — 30.1%

Criteria weights

Overall consistency ratio: 0.01 (within the 0.1 acceptability threshold).

AI-generated summary

Generated by AI from this decision's data; may not reflect the latest judgments.

Results summary

Carrigbeg Upland emerges with a clear lead, scoring 39.0% compared to 30.9% for the runner-up Slievebawn Common. The decision reflects input from eleven contributors across all necessary comparisons. Carrigbeg Upland wins decisively on Community Acceptance, where local support runs 13.4 percentage points stronger, and maintains a solid advantage in Wind Resource at 6.4 percentage points ahead. These two criteria, which together dominate the weighting, are what drive its victory.

The trade-off is clear: Carrigbeg Upland gives up ground on Grid Connection Cost and Environmental Sensitivity, trailing by 6.3 and 5.4 percentage points respectively. For a community wind farm, the strength of local backing and the wind potential apparently matter more than either the cost to connect or the environmental constraints at this stage. Check the sensitivity analysis to see whether the ranking holds if the weight on environmental factors or connection costs were to increase.

Sensitivity summary

Carrigbeg Upland holds a clear lead of 8.1 percentage points over Slievebawn Common, but this top choice can change if weights shift substantially on any of the four criteria. Wind Resource would need to increase to 48.8 percent to push Knockmore Ridge into first place, while Community Acceptance would need to decrease to 12.5 percent, Grid Connection Cost to increase to 36.7 percent, or Environmental Sensitivity to increase to 39.3 percent to hand the win to Slievebawn Common. All four criteria are rated stable, so Carrigbeg Upland's lead is solid under normal circumstances.

Decision criteria

Alternatives

With JavaScript enabled, this page shows the full interactive decision: the hierarchy, every pairwise comparison on the Saaty 1–9 scale, consistency checking, the calculated priorities, and sensitivity analysis. New to the method? See What is the Analytic Hierarchy Process?