The effect of Incorporating phase change materials in building envelope on reducing the cost and size of the integrated hybrid-solar energy system: An application of 3E dynamic simulation with reliability consideration

Abstract

According to statistics, building energy consumption is responsible for 40% of the world’s energy usage and 40% of the emission. To minimize the enormous damage caused by energy usage in the building sector, many energy storage applications as phase change materials (PCMs) are proposed. Moreover, retaining proficient energy systems to arrange for building energy loads is another essential tactic to diminish energy consumption in the building division. In this research, a new hybrid solar-based energy system is proposed to supply the demands of the building. The system is grid-connected and has two-way interactions with the grid that can sell the electricity to compensate for some of the building bills. The usage of a heat storage tank and not employing expensive batteries in a solar system is another advantage. A two-story building is dynamically simulated in actual weather conditions of Tabriz city with embedded PCM materials in the building façade. Also, the building energy demand and the proposed system recital are systematically compared with and without PCM integration. The results indicated that with the incorporation of PCM energy storage, the building's yearly heating and cooling loads are decreased by 27.4%. Such a reduction of heating and cooling loads, in turn, improves the plant performance by 18.42%, 13.0%, and 28.54%, respectively, in terms of fuel consumption, exergy efficiency, and unit product cost. Moreover, the reliability of heating and power generation is 0.9688, while the reliability of power and cooling generation is 0.9783 on the supply side.