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This study aims to evaluate the feasibility of solid oxide fuel cell based combined cooling heating and power (SOFC-CCHP) applications in public buildings of China from different perspectives. Operations of the natural gas fueled SOFC-CCHP systems for 20 years’ have been simulated for five categories of public buildings in five locations of China. Parallel simulations of combustion based CCHP systems and conventional system have been conducted for comparison. By single criterion assessment, SOFC-CCHP systems demonstrate outstanding performance on energy efficiency as well as reducing carbon emission, air pollution and human health damage cost. The levelized cost of energy (LCOE) turns out to be competitive with commercial electricity price, but a long payback period (SPP) has also been identified. To further assess the overall performance of SOFC-CCHP systems, a multi-criteria assessment model has been developed by combining the gray relational analysis (GRA) approach and the entropy-weighting method. The result indicates that hospital, hotel, and supermarket achieve more benefits than office and school; warmer regions rank slightly higher than colder regions. In addition, sensitivity analysis has been performed on SPP and LCOE. Overall, this paper provides theoretical guidance and evaluation approach for SOFC-CCHP demonstrations in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent decades, many countries tend to increase the use of renewable energy sources. Serbia has good natural conditions for the exploitation of solar energy. This paper integrates geographic information system and multi-criteria evaluation approach in order to select the best sites for development of ground-mounted photovoltaic power plants. The spatial suitability index was calculated for the whole territory of Serbia. It is shown that northern part, especially Banat region, possesses the largest potential for development of solar projects. Comparing obtained results with locations of existing photovoltaic power plants in Serbia, certain disagreements were noted. This is due to the application of exclusion criteria that except agricultural land even if the quality of the soil is poor. Beside the geographic distribution of suitable land, this study has shown that the largest electric power generation potentials have the City of Zrenjanin, Municipality of Novi Bečej, and Municipality of Čoka. Potentially, they can generate enough electricity to substitute whole yearly electricity production in Serbia. At the end, the subject of research was focused on the best ranked parcels, showing the potential electricity generation and the inter-annual variability in energy production based on module temperature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Several distributed triple-generation (DTG) system options to produce cooling, heating and power have been evaluated and compared in a multi-criteria method, such as technical, economic, environmental and social aspects. Due to the fuzzy or uncertain evaluation criteria, this paper presents an improved grey incidence evaluation method for DTG systems. This method adopts the combination of the improved analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and the entropy information method together with the use of linear combination weighting. The optimal weighting method combines both the subjectivity of decision-maker and the objectivity of numerical data to obtain the comprehensive assessment result. As an example, several kinds of DTG systems, whose dynamical sources are respectively Gas Turbine, Gas Engine, Stirling Engine and Fuel Cell, and a separate generation system are compared and evaluated in detail. Based on the different priority to evaluation indexes, the optimal DTG options are established. The results show that this method is simple and practical, and it can provide a reliable evaluation method for DTG systems. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]