The objective of this paper is to present a methodology to evaluate the viability of developing solar photovoltaic projects for large investor-owned utilities. By taking into account the trade-off between the cost per kWh of electricity generation and total risk for an investor-owned utility, a multi-objective model of the energy generation portfolios is developed. The decision making model can determine the proportion of different energy generation sources in an investor-owned utility portfolio that reduces risk while providing the lowest cost per kWh of electricity generation possible. In order to measure the risk of the investor-owned utility for energy portfolio selection, an investigation of possible dangers and failures of energy generation portfolios is made and 9 main failure modes are identified. The failure mode and effects analysis is employed to calculate the risk priority numbers for each risk. To deal with the uncertainties of the levelized cost of electricity and risk levels of failure modes, the fuzzy method is introduced and an equivalent crisp model is derived which is then solved by employing a multiple objective particle swarm optimization algorithm. The analysis for four large scale investor-owned utilities in Florida is presented to highlight the performance of the developed optimization method. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.