Some projects founded by the European Commision, as “Envision”, have the goal to investigate solutions to meet the smart city definition. This project aimed to increase renewable energy exploitation and energy efficiency developing innovative solutions for solar thermal collectors (i.e., NIR absorbing coloured coating and NIR transparent coloured cover glass) and Building Integrated Photovoltaics (BIPV) technologies that do not compromise façade aesthetic and functional properties. These solutions should unlock the potential of building vertical surfaces and, coupling with heat pumps (HPs) and storages, could lead an efficient usage of harvested energy despite the solar radiation aleatory.
To preliminary evaluate the performance of innovative solutions coupling with thermal (TES) and electrical (ELS) storage technologies, Matlab-Simulink dynamic models have been developed for two energy systems layouts. The simulated TES typologies were the glycol mixture stratified, the packed bed solid and the PCM TESs, while for ELSs the data used were referred to Li-ion, Ni-Cd, Na-S, NiMH and flow batteries.
The results related to the single building layout simulations showed that, following the self-consumption strategy, a solar fraction about 89% for thermal demand and about 27% for electrical consumption is reached, in addition to a HP SCOP equal to about 4.32. Compared to a scenario with only a heat only boiler (HOB) and the electrical grid (EG) connection, about 51% of CO2 emissions reduction is achieved. While the results related to DHN layout showed that the Envision configuration allows to reach up to about 41% of solar fraction for thermal demand, 1.59 HP SCOP and 11% of CO2 emissions reduction.
