GA/AHP-based optimal design of a hybrid CCHP system considering economy, energy and emission

Integration of CCHP systems into large buildings provides considerable advantages, as far as the economy, energy consumption and environment related issues are concerned. In this paper, the integration of a hybrid CCHP system into a commercial building is studied. The hybrid CCHP system consists of a renewable and a non-renewable CHP component, photovoltaic/thermal (PV/T) panels and internal combustion engine (ICE). Three objective functions are considered based on cost saving, energy saving and emission reduction goals where are determined as annual operating cost ratio (AOCR), primary energy saving ratio (PESR) and carbon emission reduction ratio (CERR). Considering each objective function, the GA optimization is applied in three different approaches as a single objective optimization problem to find the best size of the system components. Then, using Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), which is one of the most Used Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) procedures, the most profitable answer is determined from the three answers achieved in the optimization process. The results showed a good performance of the system. In PESR optimization, which is selected as the best system size, values of 32.96%, 17.25% and 14.79% was achieved for AOCR, PESR and CERR, respectively. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.