Solar cooling systems : A comparative analysis for solar thermal and solar PV cooling systems for Industries using a techno-economic approach

With the need to reduce CO2 emissions in the energy sector, ensure electric grid stability and reduce future cost uncertainties for process cooling, solar cooling can be an interesting solution. This report describes the comparison of solar cooling with either a photovoltaics system or a solar thermal system using a thermally driven chiller. The application investigated was industrial process cooling, for three load profiles and three locations in Europe. The method of comparing was by simulations in TRNSYS and calculation of the global levelized cost of cooling, taking into account the total cost of covering the whole cooling demand. The results for the global levelized cost of cooling showed that solar thermal cooling was not economically competitive compared to the reference system or the photovoltaic cooling system for any of the investigated boundary conditions. The general trend was that the global LCOC for the solar thermal cooling increased with the solar cooling fraction. The photovoltaic solar cooling system global LCOC was in parity with the reference system for low SCF of 20 % to 30 %, and even up to 60 % for some boundary conditions