TY - JOUR
TI - Combined financial and environmental optimization of a trigeneration system
AU - Silva Heber Cláudius Nunes
AU - Hornsby Eric Monroe
AU - Melo Filipi Maciel
AU - Magnani Fabio Santana
AU - Carvalho Monica
AU - Ochoa Alvaro Antonio Villa
JN - Thermal Science
PY - 2023
VL - 27
IS - 1
SP - 321
EP - 334
PT - Article
AB - This paper firstly studies the influence of variations in fuel tariffs and GHG emissions of the grid electricity on the financial and environmental metrics, demonstrating divergences when considered alone. Secondly, a combined economic and environmental objective function is proposed, yielding a good compromise between both concerns. Real data are available from a Brazilian Northeast building where electricity, heat (hot water), and cooling are important for comfort and well-being. When addressing the bicriteria optimization, consideration of 20% of one metric enormously improved the overall result, with only slightly worsening the other metric. This is possible because the optimization scheme can choose from a rich pool of physical and operational scenarios.