Experimental Validation of a Tool for the Economic Operation Optimization of a Hybrid Energy System

Hybrid energy systems (HESs) can bring together different types of generation, storage, and consumption units in a single system, improving the overall performance compared to a system that depends on a single source, thanks to the exploitation of synergies coming for interplay of multiple energy carriers. To achieve these benefits, daily operation is crucial and can represent a challenging task due to the coupling of energy technologies and processes, the time-varying user demands and the need to reach optimal economic performance. The contribution of this paper is to present the experimental validation of a tool for the economic operation optimization of a HES, by using as case study one of the experimental plants available at ENEA Portici Research Centre. The HES consists of a combined heat and power (CHP) system, an auxiliary gas-fired boiler and a thermal energy storage for satisfying the electrical and thermal demand of a single-family house. The experimental simulations of the CHP implementing the optimized daily scheduling and a conventional ON/OFF logic are carried out to compare results and demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed optimization tool for minimizing the net daily energy costs of the HES.