scope:

ABSTRACT

Software with a user-friendly interface is presented for integrating energy storage and renewable energy sources with co-generation (CHP) and tri-generation (CHP&R) systems. This simulation provides a first order investigation of these systems and its integration with renewable energy and storage systems. The design engineer can select different power systems, heating, and cooling devices. A gas turbine, a reciprocating internal combustion engine, or a hybrid gas turbine and fuel cell could be selected as a chp system. Besides taking advantage of the energy recovery in the CHP system for domestic hot water (DHW) and space heating, the designer can select heat pumps for electrification of heating systems. The software inputs consist of the application's electric load and thermal load as well as the performance parameters and efficiency of the power producing device(s), back up boilers/ furnaces, coefficient of performance for vapor compression refrigeration, heat pump, or absorption cycles, and the efficiency of the generator and inverter. The output is the energy utilization factor (EUF), the rate of carbon dioxide production and the entropy production. The simulation is based on using the thermal load to power ratio, HLRP, as a basic scaling parameter. To differentiate the cooling load from the total thermal loads the parameter CHR, the ratio of the cooling to total thermal load is introduced. One can either do a single design point investigation or introduce continuous load information. A report in excel file format is provided to compare different options and to allow the designer to perform their own detailed summary of the calculated results. A case study results for a representative commercial building demonstrate the performance comparison of a CHP plant for a given application to one that integrates photovoltaic system.