Combined cooling heat and power in supermarkets

With recent initiatives from the UK government on reduced energy use, energy efficient systems such as combined heat and power (CHP) have been considered for new applications, including supermarkets. In these commercial buildings, the seasonal demand for heat results in underutilisation of the CHP equipment, limiting the primary energy savings that may be achieved. To increase the utilisation time, it has been proposed that heat generated by the CHP unit could be used to power an absorption refrigeration system providing cooling for the refrigerated cabinets. The application of an integrated CHP/absorption scheme or combined cooling heat and power (CCHP) in the supermarket is the subject of this paper. The paper initially describes the cooling/heating/power requirements of a typical supermarket and then reviews a number of CCHP options involving the use of different cooling and engine technologies. The investigation calculates and compares the energy savings/capital costs of the different options against typical conventional supermarket technology.