Optimal Integration Of Solar Energy With District Cooling System: Mathematical Modeling Approach

The outstanding development witnessed in various sectors across the globe caused mankind to increase their need to cooling energy and hence, consume unsustainable energy resources excessively. That raised the fears on the potential presence of these resources and on how to combat global warming caused by fossil fuel energy. Therefore, industries are shifting toward using renewable energy resources as they are widely available and environmentally friendly. This research addresses the integration of solar energy into conventional cooling systems. Three mixed integer linear programming (MILP) models are developed to represent different configurations of solar thermal and electric cooling systems combined with the conventional cooling systems to minimize annual total system cost. The models are fed with actual data collected on the parameters of the models. Moreover, four different case studies which represent low, medium, high and very high cooling demand scenarios are selected and solved using the CPLEX solver. Furthermore, sensitivity analysis are carried out on the different parameters of the models. The results of the research indicated that the solar electric cooling system connected to the grid is the most economical system compared to other system configuration