Abstract
The introduction of more efficient fossil fuel technologies, combined with renewable sources can provide an interesting reduction in final energy consumption of the building sector.The present paper deals with a hybrid system made up of a micro-Combined Cooling Heat and Power (CCHP) technology and a High Concentrator Photovoltaic (HCPV) system, suitable for the residential and tertiary sectors in the Mediterranean area. The aim of the work is to identify the optimal strategies for the system management on the basis of the electric energy value determined by the day-ahead electricity market. For many times CCHP systems, and especially small units, have been granted fixed electricity prices, but recently, fixed prices have been replaced with variable prices, according to the negotiations on the day-ahead electricity market, providing both new opportunities and the need of identifying new management strategies. A specific algorithm has been developed to assess the operation of the hybrid poly-generation system aimed at minimizing the operational costs, the primary energy usage and the carbon dioxide emission of the entire system. An ‘ad hoc’ model describes the performances of a HCPV module, whose production has been calculated on the basis of experimental data from a Multi-junction (MJ) solar cell test-bench and from simulations data coming from a ray tracing software. Apart from the ICE, for which a specific model has been developed in Matlab/Simulink environment, the other units (e.g. vapour compression chiller, absorption chiller, heating boiler) have been simulated on the basis of their main characteristic parameters (i.e. coefficient of performance, efficiency). Finally, a sensitivity analysis has been developed in order to assess how the optimal solution varies upon the main design parameters. Results show a reduction from 30% up to 50% compared with separate energy production..