Dispatch strategy and model for hybrid photovoltaic and trigeneration power systems

The advent of small scale combined heat and power (CHP) systems has provided the opportunity for in-house power backup of residential-scale photovoltaic (PV) arrays. These hybrid systems enjoy a symbiotic relationship between components, but have large thermal energy wastes when operated to provide 100% of the electric load. In a novel hybrid system is proposed here of PV-trigeneration. In order to reduce waste from excess heat, an absorption chiller has been proposed to utilize the CHP-produced thermal energy for cooling of PV-CHP system. This complexity has brought forth entirely new levels of system dynamics and interaction that require numerical simulation in order to optimize system design. This paper introduces a dispatch strategy for such a system that accounts for electric, domestic hot water, space heating, and space cooling load categories. The dispatch strategy was simulated for a typical home in Vancouver and the results indicate an improvement in performance of over 50% available when a PV-CHP system also accounts for cooling. The dispatch strategy and simulation are to be used as a foundation for an optimization algorithm of such systems. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.