Decentral micro combined heat and power generation (CHP) is an efficient way to supply single-family houses with heat and electricity. Recently, besides conventional CHP units, small high temperature fuel cells have appeared on the market. Unlike conventional CHP units the fuel cell system does not generate enough heat so an additional peak load boiler (PLB) is needed. Since this high temperature fuel cell is operated statically and the demand is variable, a surplus of electricity is generated, which is fed into the grid with little benefits. Therefore, an electrically driven PLB could increase the self-consumption of the generated electricity and reduce the system costs. Hence, in this paper such a fuel cell CHP system is simulated with different PLBs to supply a single family home with heat and electricity. The reference case is a gas-condensing boiler, which is compared to a case with an electric resistant heater and two cases with different sized heat pumps as PLBs. The results show that a small heat pump as PLB reduces not only the costs of the system, it also reduces the primary energy demand.     «

Decentral micro combined heat and power generation (CHP) is an efficient way to supply single-family houses with heat and electricity. Recently, besides conventional CHP units, small high temperature fuel cells have appeared on the market. Unlike conventional CHP units the fuel cell system does not generate enough heat so an additional peak load boiler (PLB) is needed. Since this high temperature fuel cell is operated statically and the demand is variable, a surplus of electricity is generated,...     »