Abstract
In order for economically viable distributed generation systems for apartment buildings to spread, it is essential to develop an efficient and low-cost heat supply system. We have developed a new cogeneration system called the Neighboring Cogeneration system (NCG). The key concept of this system is to install a heat accumulator with a hot water supply and a room heating function at each household and to connect different households by a single loop of hot water pipe. As a result, time leveling of the heat supply and heat transferring among households becomes possible. Thus, the costs of the pipe and the heat source equipment decrease. Furthermore, because all of the heat accumulators store heat, the total heat storage capacity is large enough for cogeneration to generate exhaust heat according to the electricity demand and with a high operating rate. In this paper, we report the results of the NCG system for 7 lived-in households. The controlling system worked efficiently. All of the households were able to use hot water without any difficulties. Further, we report the results of the energy saving effect of the NCG system for 50 lived-in households by means of a simulation based on the experimental results for NEXT21.
