Transient thermal performance assessment of a hybrid solar-fuel cell system in Toronto, Canada

•Transient thermal modeling of a hybrid solar and fuel cell energy system is conducted for Toronto, Canada.•Exergy and economic analyses are conducted for the hybrid system.•The variations of major design parameters on the system performance are investigated.

A comprehensive thermodynamic analysis is reported of a proposed hybrid energy based on solar energy and a fuel cell system. Small-scale solar PV systems equipped with a fuel cell and water electrolysis are suggested for remote combined cooling, heat and power applications. A dynamic simulation of this system is carried out using TRNSYS software. The first law of thermodynamics is applied to model each subsystem and the subsystems are validated to ensure the correctness of the simulation code developed in Matlab software. Exergy analysis is included to enhance the analysis. In order to carry out a case study, climate data for the city of Toronto in the province of Ontario, Canada are used and the solar irradiance during one year are extracted from TRNSYS and applied to the Matlab developed code. The effects of fuel cell current density on exergy efficiency, electricity production and exergy destruction rate are investigated. The overall energy and exergy efficiencies for the hybrid system are found to be 29% and 36%, respectively.