Economic and environmental aspects of the component sizing for a stand-alone building energy system: A case study

When designing a building energy system based on renewable energy sources, a major challenge is the suitable sizing of its components. In this paper, a simulation tool is presented for determining the optimal sizes of the main components of a stand-alone building energy system which integrates both thermal and electric renewable energy sources. Since the control of this multisource energy system is a non-trivial, multivariable control problem, particular emphasis is placed on the energy management system. A control structure based on model predictive control is proposed, whereas the underlying optimal control problem is formulated as a mixed-integer linear programming problem.