Active control method based on operation strategy for a novel combined cooling, heating and power system integrated with solar thermochemical process

Effectively solving the problem of mismatch between combined cooling, heating and power (CCHP) system outputs and user's load demands is one of the current research hotspots. An improved active control operation strategy (ACS) is proposed for a novel CCHP system integrating with solar thermochemical process, which gives priority to the use of flue gas waste heat for heating, and actively adjusts the generated electricity to supplement the cooling capacity with the electric chiller. And a new performance evaluation index named as valuable primary energy efficiency (VPEE) is proposed to reflect the valuable primary energy efficiency of CCHP system based on meeting user's energy demands. The fossil energy saving rate, carbon dioxide emission reduction rate, cost saving rate and comprehensive performance matching (CPM) are also taken into account. The results show that the proposed CCHP system can effectively meet the user's energy demands under different situations with ACS method. The comprehensive performance of the CCHP system with ACS method is superiority to those under reference strategies. The average VPEE of the CCHP system is the highest under ACS strategy, reaching 89.07 %. The average CPM values of the CCHP system in typical summer, transition and winter day are 58.90 %, 45.80 % and 47.87 % respectively, which are the highest values under the three operation strategies in the corresponding days. The comparison of application results in different cities shows that the CCHP system has better CPM when applied in cities with higher solar radiation under the ACS strategy, especially significantly improves the “outputs-demands” matching.