A novel method to determine the best size of CHP for an energy hub system

Today, the interest on distributed generation has been increasing, especially due to technical development on generation systems that meet environmental and energy policy concerns. One of the most important distributed energy technologies is Combined Heat and Power (CHP). CHP is small and self-contained electric generation plan that can provide power for household applications, commercial or industrial facilities and hence its applications are overtly increasing. It can reduce power loss and enhance service reliability in distribution systems. One of the influential factors for the users is the purchasing cost of CHP which is largely dependent on its type, capacity and efficiency. Therefore among all exciting of the commercial CHP technologies certain economic choices are to be taken into account. Cost-Benefit analysis is one of the famous approaches aiming at maximization of benefit-to-cost ratio. The proposed method in this paper determine the optimized size of CHP for users by considering an integrated view of electricity and natural gas network based on the novel concept of energy hubs. The benefits of CHP placement equipped with a heat storage device described in this paper include power cost saving, power loss reduction, reliability enhancement and environmental considerations. At last to confirm the proposed method the best size of CHP is determined for a hotel as a case study.