Research PaperMulti-objective optimal component sizing of a hybrid ICEÂ +Â PV/T driven CCHP microgrid

•A novel hybrid CCHP system is modeled and optimized.•Hybrid CCHP system is compared with a conventional CCHP system.•Economic, energy saving and environmental indices are calculated and assessed.

This paper presents a multi-objective optimization approach in order to find the optimal capacities of a CCHP microgrid, to meet the power, heating and cooling loads of a large office building located in Tehran. The CCHP microgrid is modeled in two states: (a) an Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) driven system; (b) a solar assisted CCHP system including ICE and Photovoltaic/Thermal (PV/T) panels. The model is implemented in MATLAB and optimized via NSGA-II. The optimization is carried out to simultaneously minimize the Net Present Cost (NPC) and maximize the Primary Energy Saving (PES) of the system. Carbon Emission Reduction Ratio (CER) is also calculated to assess the environmental performance of the microgrid.The results revealed that, despite a slight increase in the average value of NPC, the CCHP system integrated with solar energy have a considerably better performance in energy saving and emissions than the ICE driven system.