Optimal configuration of modular cogeneration plants integrated by a battery energy storage system providing peak shaving service

Combined heat and power (CHP) generation is a fundamental practice to reduce primary energy consumptions and mitigate the related greenhouse gas emissions. Cogeneration plants are even more important in the Hospital sector, due to cost reduction of the energy and to the possibility to share different source of primary energy. Furthermore the integration of a battery energy storage with the CHP system could further increase the expected advantages by enabling more flexible operating strategies. Aims of this paper is to optimize the energy production and its storage by using a suitable alghoritm. A vector optimization problem has been solved to find the optimal configurations of a modular cogeneration plant (i.e. size and number of CHP gas engines; battery size) which maximize the primary energy saving while minimizing the payback period. Results based on electricity and heat demand of a hospital facility demonstrate how the battery energy storage system allows the shifting of the Pareto frontier towards better economic results when compared with Pareto solutions that do not considering the accumulation of energy of the CHP plant. The methodology provides a flexible procedure for the optimal configuration and detailed analysis of CHP plants integrated by an electrochemical based energy storage system.