Feasibility Study of Solar Cooling Thermally Driven System Configurations for an Office Building in Mediterranean Area

The high temperature values in the summer time in southern Europe involve a high demand of energy for air conditioning. The advantage of solar cooling is the simultaneity of strong sunlight and cooling requirement. In fact, when the demand of electricity reaches extreme peaks for the excessive use of air conditioners, heat energy from the sun it is available. In this paper, an analysis with NEGST (New Generation of Solar Thermal System) feasibility study for a solar cooling plant in southern part of Italy (Naples) is carried out. The building is an office of a chemical industry. It is 48 m long, 23 m wide and 3.5 m high, and 200 people work inside. Thermal loads by machines, people, PC etc. were evaluated by means the software Energy Plus. It is considered three different type of collectors (FPC, ETC and PTC) and two different chillers: single effect for collectors FPC and ETC and double effect (H2O-BrLi) for the collectors PTC. Results are given in terms of solar fraction and PE-Saving for three different configurations. Then, it calculated the payback time for the best plant configuration.