Combined cooling, heating, and power system (CCHP), coupled with solar energy, have been widely used in building energy supplies. This is because they have the advantages of high energy utilization efficiency and lower pollution emissions. However, there are many influencing factors, complicated structures, and fluctuations in renewable energy sources, which led to ineffective system scheme configurations. In particular, the fluctuations in meteorological elements, such as temperature and radiation under climate change, have increased the difficulty of forecasting user's load and estimating renewable energy output. This research used a five-star hotel in Shanghai, China, as a study case and established an improved version of operation optimization model of a solar hybrid CCHP system. There are two major innovations: (i) Regional climate simulation software PRECIS was applied to predict the temperature and radiation changes in this region over the next 80 years, and the predicted results were plugged as the inputs to the DeST software and solar system output calculation formulas to estimate the user load and the system output under climate change; (ii) the outputs from step (i) were incorporated into the operation optimization model of the hybrid system for generating appropriate operation schemes which could help adapt to climate change. The obtained results show that in the same RCP scenario, user-side cooling demand increases annually. In contrast, the heating demand decreases over time. Their variation degree in the RCP8.5 scenario exceeds those of the RCP4.5 scenario, which directly affect the system output. In addition to external meteorological elements, selected key parameters (such as step electricity price) and cascade utilization mechanism also affect equipments' output. Compared with traditional optimization model based on historical meteorological data, the optimal operational scheme under climate change could effectively avoid imbalance between energy supply and demand caused by the extremely high-temperature event, and also reduce excessive energy supply under warm winter condition.
Wang, X; Xu, Y; Bao, Z; Li, W; Liu, F; Jiang, YT
Operation optimization of a solar hybrid CCHP system for adaptation to climate change
Energy Conversion And Management