Energy Conversion and Management, Vol.195, 244-261, 2019
A techno-economic comparison of a photovoltaic/thermal organic Rankine cycle with several renewable hybrid systems for a residential area in Rayen, Iran
The main objective of this investigation is to introduce an economic and feasible hybrid energy system to provide the required load for a household in Rayen, Iran. The case study is a building with 20 families. The power consumption of a family at a peak is considered by 4 kW. So, this combined system must provide a power of 80 kW. First a hybrid organic Rankine cycle is proposed and assessed by exergy and exergoeconomic methods. The results of exergy analysis indicate the overall exergy efficiency of the system is 7.29%. As well as, the greatest exergy destruction is related to the photovoltaic panels with a value of 337.16 kJ. The outcomes of the exergoeconomic assessment showed that, the highest and lowest capital investment cost rate belong to the photovoltaic panels (54233 $/year) and condenser (7092 $/year), respectively. Also, the product cost rate is calculated by 5.2 million $/year. In continue, to identify the key parameters which influence on the total performance of the ORC system, a parametric analysis is done. Because of the hybrid organic Rankine cycle has a high amount of the cost of energy, seven renewable hybrid energy systems are proposed and modeled by HOMER software. The results show the optimum energy system for this residential area is the hybrid PV - wind-diesel - battery. This configuration has a net positive cost of 268,592 $ and a cost of energy of 0.197 $/lcWh. At the end of this study, to find the impact of the variations of the fuel cost and peak load on system performance, a parametric analysis was carried out.
Keywords:Hybrid energy systems;Renewable energy;Organic Rankine cycle;Exergy analysis;Economic analysis;HOMER software