Simulations of Solar Thermal Cooling System in the Oman climate: Case study for a Building at Innovation Park Muscat

摘要

An increasing demand in space cooling and thus in electricity is not only a challenge for the public electricity supplyin Oman, but also leads to an increase of CO2-emission, as the electricity production in Oman relies almostcompletely on fossil fuels. This work aims to investigate different options of a solar cooling system for a nonresidentialbuilding at Innovation Park Muscat in Oman with the target autarky from the public electricity grid.Therefore, the two main principles of solar cooling, thermally driven with solar thermal systems and electricallydriven with photovoltaics, are modelled in a dynamic simulation environment. The solar thermal system containsdouble covered flat plate collectors, a s hot water tank storage and an absorption chiller with aquifer cooling for heatrejection. The electrically driven systems consist out of a PV system with batteries and a compression chiller. Theresults of the simulations show the suitability of solar cooling and give the optimised dimensions for each system. Ahigh correlation between the cooling load and the solar radiation makes the full coverage even at small storage sizespossible, where the PV driven system has an advantage in terms of required space.