An Economic Investigation of Solar Energy Applied to Water Cooled Liquid Chillers

This paper provides an economic evaluation and comparison of commercially available absorption and vapour compression chillers driven either partly or fully by solar energy. Life cycle costing has been used to assess the relative economic ranks of four solar air-conditioning schemes. The effect of the chilled water supply temperature on the specific system capital costs have been studied as well the criticality of the equivalent full load hours of plant operation and solar fractions with regards to the fossil fuel energy demand and operating costs. The results indicate that the double effect absorption chiller with evacuated tube collectors has the lowest fossil fuel energy demand and competitive LCC performance compared to PV-assisted vapour compression chillers. Thus, technical guidance on the procurement and operation of solar cooling plant is presented. The calculation methodology can be applied to a wide range of solar collectors, chillers, cooling towers and ancillary systems.