Development of an energy consumption and cost data base for fuel cell total energy systems and conventional building energy systems

This report describes the procedures and data sources used to develop an energy-consumption and system-cost data base for use in predicting the market penetration of phosphoric acid fuel cell total-energy systems in the nonindustrial building market. A computer program was used to simulate the hourly energy requirements of six types of buildings - office buildings, retail stores, hotels and motels, schools, hospitals, and multifamily residences. The simulations were done by using hourly weather tapes for one city in each of the ten Department of Energy administrative regions. Two types of building construction were considered, one for existing buildings and one for new buildings. A fuel cell system combined with electrically driven heat pumps and one combined with a gas boiler and an electrically driven chiller were compared with similar conventional systems. The methods of system simulation, component sizing, and system cost estimation are described for each system. The systems were simulated for a single building size for each building type. Methods were developed to extrapolate the system cost and performance data to other building sizes