Explore the vast range of titles available.

The present work represents a detailed performance analysis of a 5-kW p on-grid solar photovoltaic rooftop system installed on a flat roof of a hospital building at a height of 12 m from the ground level, located at Perambalur (latitude 11° 23′ N and longitude 78° 93′ E), Tamilnadu, India. The daily, monthly and annual average performance parameters of the PV system including energy output, final yield, reference yield, array yield, photovoltaic array efficiency, system efficiency, inverter efficiency, performance ratio and capacity utilization factor have been analysed. The environmental benefit analysis and the payback period of the installed solar photovoltaic plant are also discussed. This solar photovoltaic power plant generates around 7144 kWh per annum of electrical energy, which is fed into the grid, and the annual average array, inverter, system efficiency, capacity utilization factor and performance ratio of the plant are found to be 12.15%, 97.12%, 11.72%, 16.31% and 76.83%, respectively, during the year 2019. The overall PV module electrical efficiency has been increased by 1.21% by applying the forced air circulation mechanism and 2.31% by applying the forced water circulation mechanism. Subsequently, the heat gained by the system can be utilized for heat load application. The installed solar photovoltaic power plant has a positive impact on greenhouse gas emissions with a reduction of 11.287 t of CO 2 , 8.86 kg of SO 2 , 18.50 kg of NO x and 485.792 kg of ash per annum. The water-based cooling in photovoltaics can potentially generate an output energy of 7310 kWh, which is relatively higher than the energy generated by the photovoltaic module with air cooling.

Building energy consumption has distinctly increased in the hot-summer and cold-winter zone in China. Solar cooling technology has been developed to reduce the increasing electricity consumption for air conditioning and to shift the peak load during hot summer days. This paper presents a performance simulation and economic analysis for both photovoltaic (PV) and thermal solar cooling systems compared to a reference system, which is composed of two electric heat pumps. The results show that 30.7% and 30.2% of primary energy can be saved by using the PV and the thermal system, respectively. The payback time is 6–7 years for the PV system, but more than 20 years for the thermal system based on current conditions in China. Therefore, the PV system is more suitable for practical application in the hot-summer and cold-winter zone. The thermal system could be an alternative when middle- and high-temperature solar thermal collector technology has been further developed, as well as following mass production of small- and middle-sized chillers.

This work presents a numerical approach to compute optimal operating conditions that maximize the absorption flux into a heat exchanger designed for absorption refrigeration systems. Experimental data were obtained from a test circuit that operates in bubble absorption mode with an inner vapor distributor into a Plate Heat Exchanger-type (PHE-type) and interacts with ammonia vapor, NH3-H2O refrigerant, and cooling water. An artificial neural network (ANN) was trained to correlate the thermal properties of the solution and absorption flux in function of easily measurable parameters (concentrations, mass flows, and pressures of saturated and diluted solutions, flow and temperature of the ammonium vapor, environment temperature, and solution temperature). According to results, ANN is adequate to correlate the operational parameters and the transport phenomena inside the heat exchanger with a precision > 99%. ANN also quantitatively identified the ammonium vapor flow (43.1%), dilute solution flow (18.1%), and dilute solution concentration (13.1%) as the variables most importantly in influencing absorption flux optimization. Subsequently, a multivariable inverse artificial neural network was applied to improve the mass transfer into the PHE-type.It was identified that simultaneous optimization of the ammonia and dilute concentration flow rates improves the absorption flow performance by up to 96.3% under aworst-case scenario (ammonia flow rate < 1.4 kg/min) and even 7.04% when even when operating near the amino vapor flow limit (ammonia flow rate > 2.0 kg/min). Finally, it was confirmed that incorporating the diluted solution concentration into the optimization contributes to improving the performance of the absorption process 1%. Results obtained are relevant in the search to produce more competitive absorption cooling systems, demonstrating the feasibility of improving the performance of heat exchangers without structural modifications. The proposed methodology represents an interesting option to be implemented to improve performance in solar cooling systems.

This paper presents the results of the activities related to the subtask “Building and process optimization” of the IEA SHC Task 65. The main topic of this activity was the integration of solar cooling in retrofitted HVAC systems. Based on the current conventional HVAC systems, the integration may present difficulties concerning cold distribution and refrigerants. Cold supply systems can also reduce airflow in air-based systems and enhance thermal comfort in buildings. The best technical actions for specific scenarios were mentioned considering both technical and economic aspects. Unfortunately, not all the analyses that were planned provide useful data. Results show that there are few recent projects that consider the application of solar cooling systems in buildings and most of them are based on simulation. Moreover, not much data about the characteristics of the buildings (envelope, other cooling systems, comfort conditions, etc.) are reported in the studies. This is because many of them are more focused on the plants’ configurations, and the performance of the different plants is in general assessed by testing the prototype in a single room. Despite this, the information provided could be used as baseline cases in order to study the potential energy savings achievable by applying solar cooling systems.

The electrical power consumption of refrigeration equipment leads to a significant influence on the supply network, especially on the hottest days during the cooling season (and this is besides the conventional electricity problem in Iraq). The aim of this work is to investigate the energy performance of a solar-driven air-conditioning system utilizing absorption technology under climate in Baghdad, Iraq. The solar fraction and the thermal performance of the solar air-conditioning system were analyzed for various months in the cooling season. It was found that the system operating in August shows the best monthly average solar fraction (of 59.4%) and coefficient of performance (COP) (of 0.52) due to the high solar potential in this month. Moreover, the seasonal integrated collector efficiency was 54%, providing a seasonal solar fraction of 58%, and the COP of the absorption chiller was 0.44, which was in limit, as reported in the literature for similar systems. A detailed parametric analysis was carried out to evaluate the thermal performance of the system and analyses, and the effect of design variables on the solar fraction of the system during the cooling season.

Solar energy powered organic Rankine cycle vapor compression cycle (ORC-VCC) is a good alternative to convert solar heat into a cooling effect. In this study, an ORC-VCC system driven by solar energy combined with electric motor is proposed to ensure smooth operation under the conditions that solar radiation is unstable and discontinuous, and an office building located in Guangzhou, China is selected as a case study. The results show that beam solar radiation and generation temperature have considerable effects on the system performance. There is an optimal generation temperature at which the system achieves optimum performance. Also, as a key indicator, the cooling power per square meter collector should be considered in the hybrid solar cooling system in design process. Compared to the vapor compression cooling system, the hybrid cooling system can save almost 68.23% of electricity consumption.

Sustainable greenhouses have gained relevance in recent years due to their potential to reduce the carbon footprint of the agricultural sector by being integrated with renewable systems, contributing to the decarbonization of energy. Although solar technologies tend to be more accessible to cover the system’s energy demands, greenhouses are subject to installation area restrictions, limiting their energy potential. This research evaluates the energy advantages of hybridizing solar thermal collector fields with photovoltaic module fields to cover a greenhouse’s cooling and heating demands. For this purpose, the solar thermal field and the photovoltaic solar system were simulated with TRNSYS and MATLAB, respectively, while a method was developed to simulate the performance of a single-effect absorption chiller that was validated using the temperature measurements of a chiller in operation. The results show that the general method maintains differences between measurements and simulation smaller than 5% with set temperatures between 5.5 and 12 degrees Celsius. The hybrid system, with an air-to-water chiller as the main machine and absorption chiller, reached a solar fraction of 0.85 and a fractional energy saving of 83%. This represents a 27% reduction in area concerning an individual solar thermal system. This research highlights that the solar hybrid configuration reduces fossil energy consumption by improving the global efficiency of energy conversion, thereby reducing the area of the solar field.

Space cooling and heating always tends to be a major part of the primary energy usage. By using fossil fuel electricity for these purposes, the situation becomes even worse. One of the major electricity consumptions in India is air conditioning. There are a lot of different technologies and few researchers have come up with a debate between solar absorption cooling and PV electric cooling. In a previous paper, PV electric cooling was studied and now as a continuation, this paper focuses on solar thermal absorption cooling systems and their application in commercial/office buildings in India. A typical Indian commercial building is taken for the simulation in TRNSYS. Through this simulation, the feasibility and operational strategy of the system is analysed, after which parametric study and economic analysis of the system is done. When compared with the expenses for a traditional air conditioner unit, this solar absorption cooling will take 13.6 years to pay back and will take 15.5 years to payback the price of itself and there after all the extra money are savings or profit.  Although the place chosen for this study is one of the typical tropical place in India, this payback might vary with different places, climate and the cooling demand.Article History: Received May 12th 2017; Received in revised form August 15th 2017; Accepted 1st Sept 2017; Available onlineHow to Cite This Article: Narayanan, M. (2017). Techno-Economic Analysis of Solar Absorption Cooling for Commercial Buildings in India.  International Journal of Renewable Energy Development, 6(3), 253-262.https://doi.org/10.14710/ijred.6.3.253-262

Solar thermal cooling is the best alternative solution to overcome the problems associated with using nonrenewable resources. There are several thermal cooling methods developed differing from each other according to the thermodynamic cycle and type of refrigerant used. Recent developments in absorption and adsorption solar cooling systems are presented. Summarized thermodynamic modeling for both absorption and adsorption solar cooling systems is given. Brief thermal analysis among the types of solar collectors is presented. System efficiencies and optimization analysis are presented. The influences of geometrical, system configurations, and physical parameters on the performance of solar thermal sorption cooling system are investigated. The basis for the design of absorption and adsorption solar cooling systems is provided. Several case studies in different climatic conditions are presented. Economic feasibility for both systems is discussed. Comparison between the absorption and adsorption solar cooling system is summarized.

Adsorption cooling system (ACS) is one of the promising alternatives to the conventional vapor compression refrigeration system (VCRS) due to its advantage of driven by low grade thermal energy instead of electric power. However due to its lower efficiency, a significant research works is in progress worldwide. In view of this, the presented paper proposes a methodology to predict the required optimum heat source temperature of two different ACSs based on novel environment friendly pairs of activated carbon-methanol and silica gel-water for the ice-making and water chiller applications, respectively and their performance analysis. Performance parameters, cooling capacity, thermal efficiency, and coefficient of performance (COP) have been used to derive the limits of source temperature and applied to two different ACS. Further feasibility study has been carried out integrating economic and environmental perceptions for the El Oued city, Algeria. The performance analysis of CarboTech A35/1/CH 3 OH showed the maximum ice production of 16.17 kg/day for the generator temperatures of 358–378 K with a COP of 0.65. The analysis of S40/H 2 O application showed the maximum chilled water of 7.88 kg/day for the generator temperatures of 348–37 K having COP of 0.74. The economic analysis suggests that hot water generation with solar energy is a better option as compared to geothermal resource.