Sizing and life-cycle assessment of building integrated thermoelectric air cooling and photovoltaic wall system

Abstract

This study presents a procedure for calculating the size and cost of integrating thermoelectric air cooling duct (TE-AD) and photovoltaic wall (PV-W) systems with test room in tropics. The investigation of economics and energy consumption was conducted, wherein three categories of air cooling systems-split air conditioner, Grid connected TE-AD system (G_TE-AD), and PV connected TE-AD system (PV_TE-AD) were compared. The sizes of the TE-AD system and PV system were determined based on the test room cooling load, sunshine duration, and daily electrical power required by the TE-AD system (kWh/day). The results obtained via life-cycle assessment (LCA) of the above systems suggested that the PV_TE-AD cooling system provides better economic and energy saving potential with better carbon emission reduction, compared to the other two systems. PV_TE-AD cooling system incurs operating costs of US$ 44.0 and US$ 151.0, lower than the G_TE-AD system and the split air conditioners, respectively. CO2 emission reduction of PV_TE-AD system reached 60.24 tons, which was two times less than that of the G_TE-AD system. The payback period of the G_TE-AD system was 4.2 years, which was six months lower than that of the PV_TE-AD system owing to the additional initial cost of the PV system.