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In order to increase the renewable energy penetration for building and industrial energy use in industrial parks, the energy supply system requires transforming from a centralized energy supply mode to a distributed + centralized energy supply mode. The application of a hybrid energy storage system can effectively solve the problem of low renewable energy utilization levels caused by a spatiotemporal mismatch between the energy source and load. This study summarized the advantages and limitations of common energy storage technologies in industrial parks from the aspects of service life, response time, cycle efficiency and energy storage density, etc. The advantages of the hybrid energy storage system in industrial parks were also discussed in terms of sustainable development, climate change mitigation, social impact, and other aspects. The typical frameworks of hybrid energy storage were summarized, and the advantages, disadvantages, and application scenarios of each typical framework were analyzed. The current status of hybrid energy storage systems was summarized from the aspects of system modeling, hybrid energy storage mechanisms, design optimization, and operation dispatching. At the same time, the key challenges in modeling, regulation, and optimization of hybrid energy storage systems were discussed. This discussion leads to proposals for the direction of future research. The optimization methods and processes for designing and operating hybrid energy storage systems were proposed based on theoretical frameworks and methods. It is hoped that this review can provide some guidance and serve as a reference for developing and applying hybrid energy storage systems in industrial parks.

Personal Comfort Systems (PCS) promise to reduce the energy needed to condition indoor environments, while also enhancing their occupants’ thermal pleasure. To explore these potentials in heating conditions, we compared the effectiveness of PCS heating various portions of the occupant against the normal Air Conditioning (AC) practice of warming the room volume. Twenty subjects experienced three modes of heating (AC only, AC together with PCS, and PCS only) at three initial room air temperatures (14, 16, and 18°C) and were given some control options throughout the testing. Skin temperatures, thermal pleasantness, and thermal sensation votes were recorded during the exposures. The PCS heating was more effective than AC control at alleviating occupant discomfort. With PCS present, the three initial room temperatures produced equivalent positive perceptions of thermal pleasantness and sensation. Providing occupants with AC control did not influence this result. AC alone did not produce appreciable alliesthesia due to its slow rate of changing the room temperature. In contrast, PCS produced an immediate pleasantness experience with its faster-acting conductive and radiative heating spread non-uniformly across the body. Whole-body thermal pleasantness closely followed the pleasantness of local body parts experiencing thermal stimuli. These temporal and spatial characteristics give PCS a significant advantage in generating thermal pleasure over traditional AC systems.

A novel semi-transparent building integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) laminate was developed and introduced in this paper. It was produced by cutting standard mono-crystalline silicon solar cells into small strips and then making electrical connections between each strip before laminating the cells between two layers of glass. The overall energy performance and energy saving potential of the BIPV insulated glass unit (IGU) under real world conditions were identified through a side by side comparative study. Compared to the reference IGU, the BIPV IGU had lower solar heat gain coefficient (SHGC) but much higher U-factor. The average HVAC electricity saving of the BIPV IGU was about 10% relative to the reference IGU. Daylighting measurement and analysis were carried out to evaluate the trade-offs associated with the BIPV IGU between daylight, glare, and lighting energy use. The results indicated that the BIPV IGU is better than the reference IGU in reducing discomfort glare. However, if the most conservative viewpoint near the window is used for the assessment, a lower transmittance BIPV IGU is required to bring the overall discomfort levels below the perceptible level. Lastly, the net energy saving potential associated with the novel BIPV IGU was identified based on the power, thermal and daylighting performance. On average, the BIPV IGU saved 16.8% of the total electricity use of the room. Further studies and improvement on the energy conversion efficiency of solar cells, the optimal transmittance as well as the thermal properties would make this technology more energy-efficient and affordable.

Solar radiation considerably influences the energy consumption of buildings and the power production of building integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) systems. Hourly solar insolation (Wh/m2), represented as the amount of solar irradiance collected on the ground during a 1-h period, is the most common solar radiation data available and widely used in weather files applied in building energy modeling programs (BEMPs). Because the solar beam and position vary over time, the use of hourly insolation data as the input might result in errors in the estimation of the direct incident solar radiation on a particular surface. In this study, methods used in BEMPs for direct incident solar radiation calculations are first analyzed, and an improved method adopting a new algorithm for estimating the solar irradiance is proposed. The algorithm assumes that the solar irradiance changes linearly within a 1-h period and can be estimated based on the solar irradiance at the half clock and slope. The collected direct normal solar irradiance data of 2016 from eight solar radiation stations in China were used to demonstrate the proposed method and evaluate its performance by comparing the results with those from three conventional methods used in BEMPs along with the ground truth measurements. In addition, in this study, factors affecting the accuracy of the calculation results are explored. The results of the estimated direct incident solar radiation show that the proposed method achieves the best accuracy, followed by the methods used in DOE-2, EnergyPlus, and DeST. The proposed method guarantees that the hourly direct solar insolation will remain the same and reflects the variation in the direct solar irradiance across a 1-h time frame. The proposed method can be adopted in BEMPs to improve the accuracy of the solar radiation calculation, thereby improving the accuracy of the simulated building performance and the BIPV production.