Optimal Allocation of Thermal, Electric and Cooling Loads Among Generation Technologies in Household Applications

The legislation of various European countries, and, in particular, the Italian legislation imposes limits on the demand for building heating and cooling in order to reduce the primary energy consumptions. Moreover, the legislation prescribes that a fraction of the demand for building cooling, heating and power must be met through renewable energy sources. Among renewable energy, wind power, solar photovoltaic, solar thermal energy, solar cooling and heat pumps have to be mentioned. In particular, heat pumps allow the exploitation of thermal energy extracted from air, water and ground. In this framework CHP systems can provide a further solution to reduce the primary energy consumption. Due to the availability of different technologies to meet building energy demand, some of them being imposed by legislation, a key factor is the choice of the logic which allows to split the energy demands among the various technologies in order to minimize the primary energy consumption. This paper aims to develop and apply a methodology for the optimal allocation of the demands for building cooling, heating and power among CHP and renewable energy systems, with the aim of minimizing the primary energy consumption, by accounting for legislative constraints. The proposed methodology can also be applied with the objective of maximizing the profitability of the investment, with reference to a specific tariff scenario.