Seasonal adaptability of PEMFC-CHP systems integrated with air source heat pump in China: Serial vs parallel architectures under typical demand patterns

Amid the global transition toward low-carbon energy systems, proton exchange membrane fuel cell combined heat and power (PEMFC-CHP) has attracted extensive attention due to its high efficiency and clean operation. To identify PEMFC-CHP system architectures that can accommodate the seasonal energy-use characteristics of Chinese households, this paper proposes two air source heat pump (ASHP) integrated PEMFC-CHP architectures: a serial architecture and a parallel architecture. Year-round performance and seasonal adaptability are evaluated under two representative residential demand patterns, namely seasonal-shift load households and steady-heat-leading load households. For a fair comparison, both architectures adopt an iterative control strategy to decouple thermal and electrical energy management. The results indicate that the parallel architecture achieves superior overall performance, with more pronounced advantages for seasonal-shift load households. The total system efficiency reaches 84.58% in summer, 90.13% in mid-season, and 92.27% in winter, representing a maximum improvement of 0.60% over the serial architecture. Weekly hydrogen consumption can be reduced by up to 1.10%, while the annualized cost and carbon dioxide equivalent emissions are also lowered by approximately 0.60%. This study provides a valuable reference for the design and energy management of PEMFC-CHP system tailored to diverse residential energy demands in China.