Design and performance of solar powered absorption cooling systems in office buildings

Abstract The paper contributes to the system design of solar thermal absorption chillers. A full simulation model was developed for absorption cooling systems, combined with a stratified storage tank, steady-state or dynamic collector model and hourly resolved building loads. The model was validated with experimental data from various solar cooling plants. As the absorption chillers can be operated at reduced generator temperatures under partial load conditions, the control strategy has a strong influence on the solar thermal system design and performance. It could be shown that buildings with the same maximum cooling load, but very different load time series, require collector areas varying by more than a factor 2 to achieve the same solar fraction. Depending on control strategy, recooling temperature levels, location and cooling load time series, between 1.7 and 3.6 m2 vacuum tube collectors per kW cooling load are required to cover 80% of the cooling load. The cost analysis shows that Southern European locations with higher cooling energy demand lead to significantly lower costs. For long operation hours, cooling costs are around 200 € MWh−1 and about 280 € MWh−1 for buildings with lower internal gains and shorter cooling periods. For a Southern German climate, the costs are more than double.