Environmental performance of a solar assisted hybrid power gas heat pump based on life cycle assessment

Energy crisis and environment damage are the two worldwide urgent problems and building energy plays an important role in the energy and environment field. To reduce heating and cooling energy consumption in buildings, a novel solar assisted hybrid power gas heat pump system is proposed. The novel system runs in five working conditions and applies solar energy combined with battery pack to guarantee the engine always works in its economic zones. Because of the complexity of photovoltaic panels in environment effect, the life cycle assessment method is introduced to evaluate the whole system's energy and environment effect. According to different photovoltaic ratios, simulation shows that the application of solar panels achieves a significant improvement in energy consumption while also causes a large mount in environment damage. At last the environmental payback time is put forward and the best environment payback time for the photovoltaic hybrid power gas heat pump system is 13.4 years at a photovoltaic ratio of 40%.