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Resources
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BCHP Screening ToolORNL’s Cooling, Heating and Power Technologies Program team has developed a BCHP Screening Tool to evaluate the installations of systems that consider facility heating, cooling, hot water, and electrical loads, the costs of power and natural gas and the simulated performance of generators, chillers, boilers, and water heaters.This is preferably analyzed on an hour-by-hour basis so thermal loads and electrical generation can be matched in time and some energy cost savings can be calculated correctly for time-of-day rates. The functions performed by the BCHP Tool determines building loads from general parameters provided by the user, combine thermal and electrical loads with operating parameters for generators and HVAC equipment to determine energy requirements for part load and off-design operation of gensets and chillers, and to determine estimated annual electric and natural gas costs using algorithms from a database of gas and electric utility rates. Results are returned to the user in tabular and graphical forms with displays of annual and monthly energy use, hourly equipment inputs and outputs for a typical weather year, and simultaneous comparisons of up to 25 CHP configurations with a non-CHP baseline system. Users can select locations from 239 cities in the U.S. and utility rates from over 100 gas and 100 electric utilities throughout the country. Some familiarity with HVAC and power generating equipment is required, but the user does not need to have any background in using DOE2 in order to use the BCHP Screening Tool successfully. To learn more about the research we perform, please contact us. |
