Cooling, Heating, and Power Systems Energy Performance

Cogeneration or combined heat and power is a technology that reduces primary energy consumption and emission of greenhouse gases by making a better utilization of fuels when compared with traditional separated systems. CHP can have an overall efficiency of 70% - 85% compared with the around 51% average overall efficiency of generating electricity and heat by conventional systems. CHP systems make better use of fuels by using recovered heat to drive thermally-activated components. During summer season, recovered thermal energy can be used to drive an absorption chiller to produce cooling. Therefore, the system is able to produce electricity, heating, and cooling. This kind of system is called combined, cooling, heating, and power (CHP or CCHP) systems, also known as trigeneration systems. This study is about the analysis of energy consumption and other benefits that make this technology technically and economically feasible.