Energy and financial performance of micro-chp in connection with high-performance buildings

This paper deals with the issue of using micro- Combined Heating and Power plants (mCHP) in high-performance houses in terms of energy conservation and cost savings. On the one hand, since mCHP systems have only a modest electrical conversion efficiency, effective exploitation of the thermal output is critical to achieving high levels of energy efficiency. On the other hand, modern high performance residential buildings display a heat-topower load ratio that does not match well with the heat-to-power supply ratio of mCHP. First, results of whole-year simulation will confirm that current performance of available mCHP products is not enough to make them competitive with standard high-performance energy converters. A way to increase their efficiency is to integrate the mCHP system judiciously into the HVAC system. Based on previous R&D experience, several integration concepts will be described and assessed with simulation. Some of the results will be presented in the second part of the paper.