No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

This paper presents the technical, environmental and economic evaluation of integrating various combinations of renewable energy sources-based systems in the expansion of a district heating and cooling network of a Technology Park near Barcelona in Spain. At present, a Combined Heat and Power plant running on fossil fuels serves the heating, cooling and electricity demand of the Park. However, this energy demand is expected to increase substantially in the coming years. EnergyPRO software was used to model the energy demand growth till 2030. Validation of the software application was done by making a base model using real plant data from the year 2014. The software was then used to project the energy supply based on three 15-year scenarios, having different combinations of renewable energy technologies, from 2016 until 2030. Primary energy consumption, CO2 emissions and the Net Present Value obtained in each scenario were used to decide the best combinations of renewable energy sources. The results of the study showed that presently, biomass boilers combined with absorption chillers and supported with solar thermal cooling, are the most competitive technologies in comparison to ground source heat pumps for large DHC networks. This is mainly because of the lower primary energy consumption (624,380 MWh/year in 2030 vs. 665,367 MWh/year), higher Net Present Value (NPV) (222 million € vs. 178 million €), and lower CO2 emissions (107,753 tons/year in 2030 vs. 111,166 tons/year) obtained as a result of the simulations.

Urban and building morphologies, usually determined at the design stage, have been proven as important determinants of energy usage at later operational stages.However, questions remain regarding the identification of the key determinants that influence urban building energy usage. To address this, in this study, an urban building dataset of 539 residential buildings and 153 public buildings was used to extract the building morphology factors as the determinants. A principal component analysis was performed to identify the key determinants for three buildings groups-residential buildings, residential blocks, and public buildings. The results show that the key determinants for residential buildings are their orientation, ratio of obstruction height to the canyon width from the south and west directions, shape coefficient, perimeterto-area ratio, and building aspect ratio. The key determinants for public buildings are similar to those for residential buildings with the exception of the ratio of the obstruction height to the canyon width from the south direction. The key determinants for residential blocks are the ratio of the obstruction height to the canyon width from the south and west directions, mass space proportion, building aspect ratio, and floor area ratio. The findings of this study provide insights into the key drivers of urban