Techno-economic evaluation of a community-based hybrid renewable energy system considering site-specific nature

In order to mitigate the environmental pollution and ease the energy consumption intensity, the integration of renewable energy sources (RES) and combined heating and power (CHP) system is expected to be widely applied throughout the world. This paper proposes a hybrid distributed energy resources (DER) system integrating CHP, photovoltaic (PV) and wind power, to handle the electrical and thermal load for residential buildings. The system economic, technical and environmental performance is analyzed in seven typical Chinese cities based on various evaluation indicators. Moreover, a non-renewable grid-connected energy system is assessed as a reference system. It is found that the optimized DER system not only meets load supplying, but also effectively minimizes emissions and system lifetime costs. DER systems are of great advantages over reference systems in almost all optimal evaluations, especially in Beijing, Wuhan, Shanghai and Nanjing. Sensitivity analysis indicates that the economic performance of DER system will become better with increase feed-in tariff, decrease local grid tariff and natural gas price. The impacts of subsidy coefficient and loan ratio on return on investment are more significant than other factors.