Institutional scale operational symbiosis of photovoltaic and cogeneration energy systems

Abstract

Due to the negative environmental effects of fossil fuel combustion, there is a growing interest in both improved efficiency in energy management and a large-scale transition to renewable energy systems. Using both of these strategies, a large institutional-scale hybrid energy system is proposed here, which incorporates both solar photovoltaic energy conversion to supply renewable energy and cogeneration to improve efficiency. In this case, the photovoltaic reduces the run time for the cogeneration to meet load, particularly in peaking air conditioning times. In turn, however, the cogeneration system is used to provide power back up for the photovoltaic during the night and adverse weather conditions. To illustrate the operational symbiosis between these two technical systems, this study provides a case study of a hybrid photovoltaic and cogeration system for the Taleghani hospital in Tehran. Three design scenarios using only existing technologies for such a hybrid system are considered here:1) single cogeneration + photovoltaic, 2) double cogeneration + photovoltaic, 3) single cogeneration + photovoltaic + storage. Numerical simulations for photovoltaic and cogeneration performance both before and after incorporating improved thermal energy management and high efficiency lighting were considered. The results show that the total amount of natural gas required to provide for the hospitals needs could be lowered from the current status by 55 % for scenario 1 and 62 % for both scenarios 2 and 3, respectively. This significant improvement in natural gas consumption illustrates the potential of hybridizing solar photovoltaic systems and cogeneration systems on a large scale.

Customer concerns about uncertainty and willingness to pay in leasing solar power systems

“…Since it is considered clean and sustainable to transform solar energy directly to electricity, many countries have announced that photovoltaic energy is going to play an essential role in electricity generation in the near future. EPIA (2009); Karbassi et al (2010); Mostofi et al (2011) estimated that overall annual installation of photovoltaic systems will increase by more than three times by 2013. In fact, overall installation has grown 15 times from 1998 to 2008.…”

An Intelligent Prediction of Self-produced Energy

“…Simultaneous generation of different energy forms (i.e. electric and heat) in one combined production system enables efficiency in fuel use; since conventional electric energy producing systems "waste" the produced heat (Mostofi et al 2011). Less fuel is required to generate the same amount of energy compared to conventional systems (Afgan and Darwish 2011).…”

A Study of Incentive Policies for Building-Integrated Photovoltaic Technology in Hong Kong

“…For residential-scale photovoltaic arrays, the development of small-scale combined heating and power (CHP) systems has provided the opportunity for in-house power backup [33]. Recent work has shown that small-scale CHP and PV technologies can produce significant emission reductions at the residential level [34,35]. Other hybrid systems include PV-Diesel [36,37], PV-Wind [38][39][40], or PV-Wind-Diesel systems [41][42][43][44].…”