Techno-economic-environmental assessment and performance comparison of a building distributed multi-energy system under various operation strategies

The distributed energy system (DES) is a promising technology that could enable decarbonization in the building sector. Comprehensive DES system assessment from a holistic perspective is crucial for system design, operation strategy selection, and performance optimization. This paper proposes a techno-economic-environmental integrated assessment model for comprehensive system evaluation. The DES configuration mainly includes a photovoltaic panel, ground source heat pump, gas turbine, absorption heat pump, and thermal storage tank. The system is simulated under three operation strategies with MATLAB/Simulink, which are following thermal load (FTL), following electric load (FEL), and following electric load with thermal storage (FELTS). Entropy-TOPSIS method is used to evaluate the DES's techno-economic-environmental performance under various operation strategies. The results indicate that the DES' primary energy efficiency ratio under the three operation strategies of FTL, FEL and FELTS are 51.49%, 86.78%, and 125.69%, respectively. The dynamic annual values are 1.05×106 CNY, 7.23×105 CNY, and 5.94×105 CNY, respectively. The total greenhouse gas emissions are 36.2 kgCO2eq/(m2∙a), 22.8 kgCO2eq/(m2∙a), and 16.4 kgCO2eq/(m2∙a), respectively. The entropy-TOPSIS analysis results showed that under FELTS operation strategy, DES performs the best; it has the best indicators for technical and environmental evaluation.