Energy Conversion and Management 51 (2010) 833845

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Energy Conversion and Management

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/enconman

Design of a combined heating, cooling and power system: Sizing, operation

strategy selection and parametric analysis
K.C. Kavvadias *, A.P. Tosios, Z.B. Maroulis
School of Chemical Engineering, National Technical University of Athens, Zografou Campus, 15780 Athens, Greece

a r t i c l e

i n f o

a b s t r a c t
This work addresses the problem of optimal design of trigeneration plants and discusses the factors that affect the operation and the feasibility of investment. The effect of various operation parameters and energy tariffs structures are studied and the performance of a trigeneration plant is presented and evaluated versus the investment size. A new operation strategy is being introduced and examined along with three existing strategies. The results incorporate various economical and performance indices that characterize the system, with reference to a case of a commercial hospital building. 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Article history: Received 12 September 2008 Received in revised form 11 July 2009 Accepted 21 November 2009 Available online 16 December 2009 Keywords: Trigeneration Resource planning Primary energy savings Energy load proles Tariffs Utilization factor

1. Introduction Combined heating and power (CHP) technology has been in use in industrial applications from the end of 19th century. However, the rapid development of the technologies involved through the last decades, made easier the penetration of CHP technology in buildings, hotels, hospitals, schools, community heating or waste treatment sites. Most recent advances incorporate the usage of alternative fuels such as hydrogen or biomass, or the exploitation of excess heat converting it to cooling power, that is used in airconditioning or in various industrial processes. The latter one is also known as trigeneration plant and has become economically viable due to the commercial spread of absorption chillers [1] or other thermally activated technologies (technologies that use waste heat as fuel to replace electric air conditioning or dehumidication loads). Trigeneration, is a very effective way of utilizing the primary energy of a fuel more efciently, economically, reliably and with less harm to the environment than centralized, dedicated electric production [24]. The technology and design aspects of cogeneration systems have been studied thoroughly. Thermoeconomic analysis [5,6], exergoeconomic [7] as well as multi-criteria analysis [8] while taking into account environmental benets [9] can conclude to a vital tool to nd the optimal design and operation strategy. The economic optimization as a part of feasibility study of a CHP unit is
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +30 2107723149; fax: +30 2107723155. E-mail address: kavadias@mail.ntua.gr (K.C. Kavvadias). 0196-8904/$ - see front matter 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.enconman.2009.11.019

usually performed through an examination of the investment criteria [10]. The results of all methods showed that CHP systems offer better performance than a conventional system, from both economic and energetic point of view. Trigeneration systems have even bigger potential for economic and energy savings due to their further utilization of primary fuel. In a trigeneration system, as in a cogeneration system, heat, power and cooling are mutually exclusive and the different loads cannot be produced independent of each other [11]. On the other hand, trigeneration plants, needs more thorough study due to the higher degree of freedom compared to simple CHP plants. Research on commercial applications small scale of trigeneration systems is recent due to the unavailability of commercial size low temperature and low cost absorption refrigeration systems. RETscreen [12] has developed a spreadsheet model that evaluates the economic and environmental performance of CHP systems for different congurations of power heating and cooling supplies. The analysis is based on average monthly values of energy demand and do not include complicated tariff schemes, thermal storage options and trigeneration-specic operation strategies. Trigeneration specic analysis conducted from Cardona and Piacentino [1] present two operation strategies that aim to satisfy the maximum coincident heating and cooling demand. This analysis do not investigate the economic protability and the effect of the tariff schemes. Further work of Cardona et al. [13] and Piacentino and Cardona [14] includes operation strategies customized for trigeneration in which energy costs are compared on an hourly basis. This kind of

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Nomenclature AC AOC AOP BL C Co CO El ELF F mC p OE P PES PS ROI T Th absorption chiller nominal electrical power (kW) annual operating cost () annual operating prot () base load operation strategy cost () cooling energy (kW) continuous operation strategy electricity (kW) electrical-equivalent load following strategy fuel (kW) thermal capacity (kW=K) overall efciency (%) Prime Mover nominal electrical power (kW) primary energy savings peak shaving strategy return on investment (%) temperature (C) thermal energy (kW) efciency (%) Superscripts A:Chiller produced by absorption chiller Boiler produced by boiler Buffer buffer vessel CHP produced be combined heat, power E:Chiller produced by electric chiller EndUse consumed in end uses GridIn imported from grid GridOut exported to grid n scale index Waste wasted Subscripts k months min corresponding to minimum capacity max corresponding to maximum (rated) capacity set setpoint value t hours

strategies can be applied only in specic tariffs (time-of-use) that hourly costs can be calculated on the y. Mixed integer programming models have also been used for the optimal design of trigeneration plants [1520]. Usually this kind of models cannot formulate all the tariff characteristics (e.g. maximum demand charges, peak hours) and the optimal solution suggest a theoretical optimal operation strategy instead of a applicable way of operating the plant. Moreover these models cannot easily guarantee a global optimum solution due to the nonconvexity of the solution space and usually they terminate with a solution, which is strongly dependent on the starting point [17]. Removing non-linearities concludes to a more inaccurate model, omitting parameters such as part load efciency, heat storage, and specic tariff formulations. The performance and the feasibility of an trigeneration investment is dependent on many parameters, such as energy pricing schemes, and operation restrictions. The study of the effect of each parameter and its contribution to the performance of a trigeneration plant is very important in order to understand the economical, energetic, and environmental benets of this technology [13]. The scope of this work is to present a complete method of designing a trigeneration plant taking into consideration all the crucial parameters and to comparatively present the benets of different congurations of it. A detailed hour-by-hour mathematical model is used and the variance of various economical (operational prot, return on investment) and performance parameters (system load coverage, primary energy savings, grid utilization factor) versus the plant size is studied for various congurations and operating parameters (strategy and tariff selection). The possible benets and the sensitivity of the alternative solutions are presented comparatively in order to show the magnitudes of the parameters variation. 2. Design parameters 2.1. Energy prole Commercial buildings have demanding thermal and cooling loads due to heating, ventilating and air conditioning (HVAC) systems. For that reason CHP technology and application matching in the commercial sector is more difcult than industrial complexes as: (a) it has more fuzzy proles, (b) on average they are operating

fewer hours per year so the payback period of the investment rises, and (c) are generally smaller than industrial sites which means that are less efcient having smaller economy scales. In contrast to industrial consumers, ambient temperature affect heavily the commercial buildings. Of course, the most important factor is occupation and activity frequency. Both seasonal and daily variations of energy need to be considered for a more precise design result. Hospitals are energy intensive facilities with long operating hours, thus they are appropriate customers for a CHCP plant. Electricity is usually distributed to ofce applications and cooling devices. Thermal energy is used for space heating and other hospital processes, such as equipment sterilization, laundry, and kitchen general hot needs. Hospitals have more stable and predictable load proles than other commercial buildings because they have a more strict working schedule during a workday. For these reasons hospitals are considered to be an ideal commercial consumer and have been used extensively in literature as a trigeneration case study plant. [13,21,20]. 2.2. Energy tariffs Electricity tariffs play a very important role in the decisionmaking process of the appropriate CHP system. The protability and optimization of a CHCP investment is heavily dependent on the structure and the pricing of energy that are applied before and after the installation of such a plant. Usually, there are three kinds of fees; xed, volumetric, and maximum demand fees. Fixed fees apply to all consumers cannot be changed or improved. Volumetric fees are in proportion to the electricity consumed each month. Demand fees are charged depending on the maximum power demand during the month, regardless of how often the maximum level occurs. Actual value of maximum demand is taken from a meter which aggregates kW h over a 15-min period. Maximum demand is charged expensively because the public power company is forced to use less efcient generating sourced of energy to meet demand, resulting in higher short-run operating costs. Usually there are two options for the end-users. Either choose a tariff that charges expensively the max power but cheaper the energy, or a tariff that charges expensively the energy and cheaper the demand. Electricity consumed for industrial uses has a discount. For the sell-back to grid, only volumetric tariffs apply, which are the same for all kinds of consumers, but they have a

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lower price. Due to the structure of the above tariff, hourly sparkspread based optimization routines and operation strategies [14,18] cannot be applied, because of the nature of the monthly maximum demand calculation. Natural gas is the most common fuel used nowadays that is fed on a CHP system. Not only is the cleanest source of energy obtained from fossil fuels, but it is the most cost-efcient fuel in terms of nal energy use. Its price varies with the fuel oil cost and it is usually comparatively cheaper than diesel. Natural gas tariffs are not xed and change every month according to various international indices related to fuel prices and other geopolitical factors, which affect consequently the protability of the investment [22].

2.3. System description The main principal of CHCP plant is that converts fuel energy directly to mechanical shaft power which can drive a generator to produce electricity. Waste heat can be recovered to cover the thermal demand or cooling demand via an absorption chiller. The structure of a CHCP plant can vary according to the technology that is used. The most commonly used prime mover for medium-scale (1005000 kW) applications and appropriate for commercial buildings are reciprocate internal combustion engines (ICE), because they have an almost at efciency curve above 30% of the nominal electrical power [23]. That means that they can work successfully on part loads and several operation strategies can be applied successfully. Moreover, they have relatively high electrical efciency (35%). An ICE-driven CHCP plant is shown in Fig. 1 and described below: A internal combustion engine is fed by air and natural gas as fuel. Through the combustion process, the chemical energy of the fuel is converted in mechanical shaft power which drives a generator to produce electricity. ICEs are operating either according to the Otto or the Diesel cycle and waste heat is generated at two temperature levels: by a low-temperature ow of coolant (90125 C) and by a medium temperature ow of exhaust gas (200400 C). The ICE exhaust gases can be used either directly in thermal processes or indirectly through a heat recovery steam generator which produces superheated steam. In a commercial building, there is no need for very high grade of thermal loads so it is assumed that there is no need to use the exhaust gases directly. When the thermal output of the prime mover is not sufcient to cover the demand, a boiler is required to operate. After the installation of a trigeneration plant cooling energy can be produced by two ways. By utilizing waste heat via an absorption chiller or by utilizing electricity via an electric heat pump. Electric chillers use a mechanical compressor in order to take the refrigerant vapor from the lower evaporation pressure to the higher condensation pressure. In absorption chillers this process is realized by means of a solution circuit, which serves as a thermal compressor. Absorption chillers cycles are based on certain thermodynamic properties of two uids. One is the refrigerant and the other the absorbent. The most common pairs of them found in literature are:  Ammonia is the refrigerant, water is the absorbent. Such a combination is chosen when low evaporation temperatures are needed (below 0 C).  Water is the refrigerant and a solution of lithium bromide is the absorbent. Vapor generated in the evaporator is absorbed into the liquid absorbent in the absorber. The absorber that has taken up refrigerant is pumped to the generator. The refrigerant is released again as a vapor by waste heat from steam (or hot water) is to be condensed

in the condenser. The regenerated absorbent is led back to the absorber to pick up refrigerant vapor [2]. In general, absorption chillers are fueled by the exhaust thermal energy from the prime mover, reduce peak electric demand and electricity charges by reducing the operating time of electric chillers and increase the electric to thermal load coincidence in the summer months. It must be mentioned though that, when waste heat is not available it is not always economically viable to generate heat by burning fuel due to the small COP of the absorption chiller (0.71.2) compared to the electrical one (2.55). Hence, absorption chiller should be preferred over the electrical chiller only when waste heat is available; when cooling demand is significantly bigger than heating demand. Moreover, absorption chillers have good partial load performance, low maintenance due to very few moving components but relatively high investment costs. On the other hand, compression chillers do not behave well on partial loads, have relatively high maintenance costs, high operation costs but lower investment costs. Finally a buffer vessel is utilized in order to balance the hourly uctuations of thermal demand, which will accumulate the heat produced that is not needed at a specic moment smoothing consequently the peaks. In case of a commercial building, the entire piping system can be considered to have nite heat capacity and accommodates the role of the buffer vessel. Energy is stored at times when the available means of generation exceed demand and is returned when demand exceed supply. Thermal energy is, in practice, the only form of energy that can be stored by consumers. Electricity can be stored locally, but at much higher cost than storage at the supply side, and is at most cases not efcient. For that reason, a storage system for electricity (i.e. battery) is not examined. 2.4. Operation strategy Operation strategy could be a simple decision in theory; operate the plant when you can generate electricity at a lower cost than you would pay if purchasing the electricity from the grid. In practice the operation strategies are part of the process control system, which is dependent on the following factors: demand for each kind of energy, prime mover nominal power, coefcients of performance and conversion factors for all energy conversions devices involved. In literature the most common kinds of operation strategy are summarized as follows [24,25]: 1. Heat demand following: the system covers rst the heat load and then buys or sells electricity in order to integrate the rest of energy demand or offer, respectively. 2. Electricity demand following: the system covers rst the electricity load and then produces (via the auxiliary boiler) or wastes thermal energy in order to integrate the rest of energy demand or offer, respectively. Instead of wasting thermal energy can be stored in a storage tank. 3. Continuous operation: the system operates only for a predened time, e.g. two shifts, ignoring the energy demand. This applies for certain types of engines that their technology does not allow them to operate on partial load and is usually met in energy producers that sell power to the grid. 4. Peak shaving: the system operates for a limited amount of time, to cover a predened part of the load during electricity peak conditions. As a result, the peak power bought from the grid is reduced. 5. Base load operation: the system is designed to cover only a constant amount of electricity load. This approach is very common on large groups with poor dynamic performance [26]. Fig. 2 illustrates the latter two strategies. The time period of each adjustment can vary from a few seconds to few hours. This

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Exhaust Gases

GRID

Electricity to nal uses Fuel Air Internal Combustion Engine

Water
Oil Cooler

Cooling Tower Jacket Water Cooler

Fuel Air Auxiliary Boiler

Electric Chiller

A Buffer Vessel G

Return

Absorption Chiller

Cold water to nal uses

Return

Return

Hot water or Steam to nal uses

Fig. 1. Flow sheet of a typical trigeneration plant.

is usually done by either using a variable speed prime mover or by throttling the fuel input. Of course, these uctuations must be in the allowed operation range of the prime mover. However, the above strategies heat demand following or electricity demand following that have been used widely in literature cannot be applied successfully in a trigeneration system. More specically:  In heat demand following, the prime mover will always produce the heat needed, so there will not be any waste heat available to feed the absorption chiller.  In electricity demand following, the prime mover will always produce the electricity needed. However, it is not dened if cool-

ing is going to be covered via thermal or electrical load. If the aggregated electrical load is considered (cooling to be covered from electrical chiller), the absorption chiller is going to be useless. If electricity without the cooling load is considered, then all cooling is going to be covered from the absorption chiller, resulting in various cases to the production of extra heat which is undesirable. This problem makes more sense in applications with volatile heat to power ratio (excluding electricity that is used in cooling devices). To solve that problem a new kind of load following strategy is proposed: Electrical equivalent load following. The equivalent required electricity Eleq is the electricity needed to cover electric

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Fig. 2. Operation strategies.

demand and cooling demand that is not covered by the absorption chiller. The main assumption of this strategy is that cooling energy is going to be produced from the absorption cooler only if waste heat from the prime mover is available. In other words heat is not allowed to be produced from the auxiliary boiler in order to operate the absorption chiller. Hence, Eleq depends also on the prime mover type and size, as bigger prime mover with a bigger HPR will produce waste heat that can potentially be converted to cooling energy via an absorption chiller. An example of this strategy is shown on Fig. 3. Given the demands for each kind of energy and the HPR of the prime mover, Eleq and thermal energy produced is plotted versus the prime mover nominal size. It is clear that on the summer months Eleq de-

clines as the prime mover size rises, because waste heat energy produced by the prime mover is used to produce cooling. On winter the thermal demand is relatively bigger than cooling so the strategy is similar to electrical load following because there is no waste heat available from the prime mover to feed the absorption chiller.

3. Process model The simplied energy ows of the system described in Section 2.3 is presented on Fig. 4. This energy system is modeled as follows:

Fig. 3. An example of electrical-equivalent load following strategy.

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Grid Grid

Elec CHP Compression Chiller Fuel Absorption Chiller Heat Cool

Boiler

Stor age

Waste
Fig. 4. Simplied energy ow diagram.

 A prime mover which produces electrical El and thermal CHP Th energy and consumes fuel F CHP . Most common technologies are reciprocating engines, gas turbines and steam turbines. Each prime mover type is dened by its heat to power ratio HPR and its electrical efciency gCHP . From this gures knowEl ing the maximum electrical nominal power Pmax , the thermal and overall efciency can be calculated.  An auxiliary boiler which produces extra thermal energy Boiler when needed. Fuel F Boiler is fed to the boiler and is conTh verted to useful thermal energy with a known efciency gBoiler .  An electrical chiller with a known COPE:Chiller and nominal power E:Chiller and produces output EC max , that is fed by electricity El cooling energy CoE:Chiller .  An absorption chiller with a known COPA:Chiller and nominal A:Chiller power output AC max , that is fed by thermal energy Th and produces cooling energy CoA:Chiller .  A buffer vessel with a predened heat capacity mC p . Heat is Waste if the vessel cannot store any more energy. wasted Th GridOut GridIn or buys El  The public power grid that sells El electricity. The energy balances for electricity, heat and cooling are calculated for each hour t by means of:

CHP

Tht

Boiler

gBoiler F Boiler t
E:Chiller

6 7 8

CoE:Chiller COP E:Chiller Elt t

A:Chiller Cot COP A:Chiller Tht

A:Chiller

The physical operation constraints consist of mainly capacity constraints and are dened by the following inequalities:

Pmin 6 Elt T Buffer min 6

CHP

6 Pmax 6 T Buffer max

9 10 11

T Buffer t

AC min 6 AC t 6 AC max

The operation of the prime mover and the production of electricity is regulated by the selection of the operation strategy.

Elt

CHP CHP

Elt

GridIn

Elt

E:Chiller

Elt

EndUse

Elt

GridOut

1 2 3

8 > Pmax > > >( > > P > > max if Eleq P PSset > > < CHP 0 if Eleq < PSset Elt > > > > > BLset > > > > > : minfEleq;t ;P max g

Continuous operation Peak shaving Base load operation Electrical equivalent load following 12

Tht

Tht

Boiler

Tht

A:Chiller

Tht

EndUse

Tht

Waste

mC p T t T t1 CoA:Chiller CoE:Chiller CoEndUse 0 t t t

The last term on Eq. (2) represent the accumulation of heat in the heat buffer vessel (or the piping of the building) having a heat capacity of mCp. This quasi-steady state equation can be applied with safety because the phenomena of temperature change is not denitive and the detailed study of such change is not desirable in this stage. CHP specications are dened by the following equations:

Tht

CHP

HPR Elt g
CHP CHP El F t

CHP

4 5

CHP Elt

Similar specications apply for the conversion of fuel to thermal energy in the auxiliary boiler, the conversion of electrical energy to cooling in the electrical chiller, and the conversion of thermal energy to cooling in the absorption chiller:

The operating costs associated with the investment of a trigeneration system are the costs of supplying fuel to the prime mover and the auxiliary boiler. Costs are calculated in a monthly k level as energy is priced monthly from the power and fuel supply companies. Excess electricity that is exported to the grid can also be taken into consideration, if the consumer is permitted to sell. Eq. (13) calculates annual operating cost AOC. The objective of a trigeneration planning model is to minimize the energy production and investment costs during the planning horizon, achieving maximum investment returns [10,27]. The annual operational prot AOP of the investment is calculated by subtracting the AOC of the investment from the AOC of the plant before the investment (Eq. (14)) Eq. (15) calculates the capital cost which is a function of the nominal power of the prime mover and the absorption chiller [28]. The cost exponent represent the scale index which is bigger for the prime mover as it is more complex unit and the economy scales do not have such an effect [29].

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Fig. 5. Hospital loads.

Fig. 6. Typical winter and summer day.

Fig. 8. The importance of electrical-equivalent load following strategy.

Table 2 Design specications. Fig. 7. Tariff selection rules. Parameter Prime mover Table 1 Electricity tarrifs applied in Greece. Tariff Power
kW

Value

CHP el

33% 1.33 1 0.75 0.7 0.25 0.50 2.5 85% 5000 4095 kW/C C M/MW

Energy

kW h

After 400 0.049 0.096

kW h kW

HPR C CHP n1 Absorption chiller COPA:Chiller C AC n2 COPE:Chiller

Before 400 Electricity Com1 Electricity Com2 Electricity Sell Natural gas 12.1 4.5 0.073 0.096 0.072 0.045

kW h kW

M/MW

Electric chiller Boiler Buffer vessel

gBoiler
mC P Limits

840
12 X

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AOC MaintenanceCost
12 X

  C F F Boiler F CHP k k

C El;GridIn Elk
GridIn

GridIn 12 X

max Elk
12 X

El;GridOut Ck El

GridOut

C Th;Waste Thk

Waste

13 14 15 16

AOP AOC 0 AOC inv estment CapitalCost C CHP Pn1 C AC AC n2 max max AOP ROI% CapitalCost

The negative term of electricity exported to grid means that end users are proted from that cost. Of course, several restrictions apply for the electricity volume that an end-user can export to the grid. The above criteria examine a CHCP investment from an economical point of view. For the assessment of the comparative advantage of CHP and the evaluation of the benet of the new plant to global energy ows, two objective criteria have been dened: overall efciency OE and primary energy savings PES. According to EU directive [30] a CHP investment is acceptable when a 7580% (depending on the type) overall annual efciency is obtained and a PES of over 10% for large-scale systems (over 1MW e ). Despite the fact that the above indexes describe the energy efciency and saving of a CHP plant, they cannot be applied successfully in a trigeneration system as the above, because the savings of the absorption chiller are not considered. Chicco and Mancarella [31] have pro-

Fig. 9. Coverage percentage of electricity, thermal and cooling energy from the trigeneration plant for various strategies and strategy parameters.

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841

posed a new generalized index that takes into account the cooling power produced by the waste heat of the CHP prime mover and it is based on a comparison with separate production means (Eq. (18)).

4. Case study 4.1. Case description The energy needs for a 350 beds hospital complex have been considered for a year. The current energy producing/converting units of the building consists of a natural gas boiler and an electrical chiller that cover the thermal and cooling needs, respectively. Thermal, electricity and cooling loads variations have been measured on yearly and daily basis. Electricity consumed to the electric chiller is been subtracted and considered separately. Fig. 5 presents

OE gel gth PES F SP F CHP F SP

El F

CHP

CHP

Th

CHP

F CHP

17

F CHP
ElCHP

gSP el

ThCHP

gSP th

Co gSP COPE:Chiller
el

CHP

18

Fig. 10. Primary energy savings ratio for various strategies and investment sizes.

Fig. 11. Effect of prime mover size on the grid utilization factor.

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the seasonal and daily uctuations of the loads. These load patterns reect the typical seasonal variability in outdoor temperature-related loads for most commercial consumers. Combining the seasonal and daily proles a separate daily load prole is being produced for each month. Fig. 6 depicts an average winter and summer load. The problem to be addressed here is stated as follows: Design problem: Given the monthly energy demand proles for each kind of energy (electricity, heat, cooling), along with their daily distribu-

tions determine the optimal conguration and design of trigeneration system that will work along with the present equipment as well as the optimal operation strategy and tariff. 4.2. Simulation parameters The structure of the Greek gas and electricity pricing for commercial customers has been used. The rates that apply in Greece from Jul 2008 are summarized in Table 1. Based on the above tariffs, Fig. 7

Fig. 12. Effect of the nominal prime mover size to the AOP for various strategies and tariffs.

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illustrates a rule of thumb for the selection of the appropriate tariff for each consumer: average price of electricity (including power and energy charges) versus utilization factor which is expressed by the percentage of the energy bought in each month in relation with the energy that could be bought on maximum load. It is clear that if the consumer operates at loads near the maximum then cheap power expensive energy tariff should be chosen. Natural gas price is considered constant at 0.045 Euro/kW h although a small discount could be given for trigeneration producers. The technical and costing design specications used are shown in Table 2.

The following cases have been considered:  Four strategies Electrical-equivalent load following (ELF) with a minimum electricity load bought from the grid of 0%, 50% or 100% kW of the annual base load. That is, ELF set 0, 175 or 350 kW. Continuous operation (CO) for 8, 16, or 24 h simulating 1,2, or 3 shifts. Peak shaving (PS) of PSset 70%, 80% or 90% of the monthly electricity load.

Fig. 13. Effect of the investment size to the return of investment for various strategies and tariffs.

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Fig. 14. Effect of the buffer vessel to the AOP on the CO strategy.

Base load (BL) operation on BLset 175, 350, 500 kW (50%,100%, 150% of the base load).  The existence or not of a buffer vessel.  Two different tariffs: Com1 and Com2 . 5. Results and discussion With the above parameters 48 different simulations were created and were run for various nominal electrical powers of the prime mover. 5.1. Plant performance Electrical equivalent load before and after the installation of a 1MW e prime mover is illustrated on a Load Duration Curve in Fig. 8. It is clear that the Eleq is reduced as the prime mover size rises, because heat waste energy is utilized to produce cooling energy. Moreover, the CHCP plant smooths the peak of required electricity, because cooling energy demand on summer months is the cause of the abrupt peaks in electricity demand as shown in Fig. 8. The percentage of energy loads covered from the new plant is being shown in Fig. 9 for various strategies and operation parameters as a function of prime mover nominal power. That includes:  Electricity load that is produced from the prime mover and is utilized by the end user, not including cooling needs.  Thermal load that is produced from the prime mover and is utilized by the consumer needs.  Thermal load that is produced by the prime mover and is fed in the absorption chiller in order to produce cooling energy utilized by the consumer needs.  Electricity load that is produced by the prime mover and fed in the electrical chiller in order to produce cooling energy utilized by the consumer needs. The following conclusions can be derived:  More than 80% of electrical,thermal and cooling requirements are covered only in ELF, ELF set 0 and CO, Hrs=24 strategy with a prime mover nominal power of 0:75MW e .  A 100% coverage percentage of thermal energy can be achieved only with the CO strategy. In this case the ideal operation mode is 24 h.  Percentage coverage on PS and BL are capped as expected, as the prime mover is not allowed to operate after a dened level. In such occasion, its pointless to use a bigger prime mover.  An absorption chiller is not needed, in any case, when small prime movers (<0:5MW e ) are installed. This happens because there is not enough waste heat to feed the cooler.

Fig. 10 depicts how the selection of the nominal size affects the primary energy savings ratio for various investment sizes. A PESR of 10% is desired for prime movers larger than 1MW e in order to be considered high efciency CHP Plant [30] and to be eligible for investment subsidies. Thus, strategies that do not achieve this percentage such as PS or CO, Hrs = 8 (one shift continuous operation) may not be suitable. Grid utilization factor versus nominal power is presented on Fig. 11. Before the investment the utilization factor was 67%. As presented in Fig. 7 Com1 is more efcient for a utilization factor of over 50%. The tariffs that are based on the improvement of utilization factor, such as PS, must be accompanied with the selection of Com1 . 5.2. Plant economy Figs. 12, 13 show the economic efciency of such an investment for various strategies and tariffs. According to the particularity of each project, e.g. budget restriction, subsidies for energy savings or for improving the utilization factor, each investor can choose the optimal design of the plant according to its own criteria. The best annual prot is being achieved from the proposed ELF strategy and tariff Com2 , but the same return on investment, but with smaller prot can be achieved by using smaller investment size and other strategies such as base load operation. CO strategy stops being protable after a certain prime mover size as it produces energy that is not needed by the plant and the cost of operation and delivering this energy to the grid or the environment is getting bigger. Com2 tariff gives generally better economical results and its efciency is connected to the grid utilization factor (Fig. 11). For this reason ELF, ELF set 0 is more protable in Com2 whereas ELF, ELF set 175 is more protable in Com1 . PS is more efcient in Com1 as it shaves the expensive peaks and takes advantage of the low price of energy but generally is not very protable because it is regulated to operate very few hours. However, it is more efcient than simple 1-shift CO strategy. The buffer vessel affects the economy of the trigeneration plant only if the continuous operation strategy is chosen, because in this operation strategy big amounts of waste heat are produced that are not needed. Hence, storing them for later use increases the economy of the investment. Fig. 14 illustrates how the annual prot is increased for less operation hours. That happens because, heat not utilized in a specic time can be transferred when needed. 6. Conclusion A method of designing a trigeneration plant was presented. The main design considerations were discussed and the economical efciency and performance characteristics of the plant were evaluated comparatively. The importance of energy tariff structures and

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operation strategy selection was shown with reference to a case of a hospital building. The proposed electrical-equivalent load following strategy was superior than conventional strategies from both economic and energetic point of view, when applied with maximum demand tariffs as it was proven to have two major benets: better load coincidence and peak reduction. The selection of the best maximum demand tariffs was proven to depend heavily on the grid utilization factor of the designed system which is affected by the size of the prime mover and its operation strategy. This parametric analysis design method can be used by any consumer that intends to install a trigeneration plant, in order to dene the optimal investment size and compare the sensitivity and importance of different operating variables.

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