Economic Analysis of A Solid Oxide Fuel Cell Cogeneration/Trigeneration System for Hotels in Hong Kong

Solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) is promising for large-scale stationary power generation due to their high efficiency. The high temperature waste heat from an SOFC stack can be recovered by integrating the stack with a bottoming cycle or other thermodynamic cycles for cogeneration/tri-generation. Due to the lack of relevant analysis on SOFC system in Hong Kong, this research is purposely designed to investigate the economics of a SOFC-absorption cooling cogeneration system for building application in Hong Kong. Energy consumption profile of Hotel ICON is adopted for a case study. Commercially available products of SOFC system and absorption chiller are chosen to configure the system. It is found that the payback period is less than 5 years with the Government subsidy at 50% of the overall system cost. In addition, if the waste heat from the absorption chiller is further recovered for tri-generation, the payback period can be further reduced to be around 3 years. Sensibility analyses incorporating 7 influential factors of payback period together with optimistic and pessimistic case study are also performed. It is found that the reduction in SOFC cost and the support from the government are the two key factors for economic feasibility of SOFC systems in HK. Further researches and interviews indicate that, despite certain technical difficulties, there are space limitation and legal or social constraints for such cogeneration/trigeneration system.