Evaluation of a Residential Scale Hybrid Co-Generation System

The performance and thermoeconomics of a residential co-generation with fuel cell system were simulated and demonstrated that there is a significant energy, exergy and cost advantage to it over the base solution. Three different operational strategies were investigated. The thermoeconomic value of electricity production and the thermal load is $0.081, $0.2613 and $0.085/KWh for strategies a), b) and c), respectively, as compared to that for the baseline solution of purchasing from the utility, $0.2615. All three strategies significantly outperformed the utility based solution. At the present time only few people are using onsite cogeneration system. Even though this project has economic competitiveness, people may not be willing to use it, because of the complexity of the system itself, the maintenance time and the site location. The issue is a tradeoff of the above disadvantages and the cost factors and independence of operating off grid.