COMBINED FINANCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL OPTIMIZATION OF A TRIGENERATION SYSTEM

Abstract

This paper firstly studies the influence of variations in fuel tariffs and GHG emis-sions of the grid electricity on the financial and environmental metrics, demon-strating divergences when considered alone. Secondly, a combined economic and environmental objective function is proposed, yielding a good compromise be-tween 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.