Thermoeconomic analysis of a solar-biomass integrated multigeneration system for a community

A multigeneration system using solar and biomass energy, for a sustainable community is presented and assessed through energy and exergy analyses. Electricity, space heating, cooling and hot water are the useful outputs of the system. A detailed parametric study is conducted to see the impacts of changing key parameters on the overall system and its subsystems. The values of energy and exergy efficiencies of the overall system are determined as 91.0% and 34.9%, respectively. An optimization is carried out to confirm that the net present cost of the electric power system is approximately $ 2,700,496 and that the levelized cost of electricity is $ 0.117/kW h. The results obtained from this study confirm that the present hybrid system is more efficient and economic compared to the cases where there are solar and biomass systems running individually. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.