Thermally and electrically-driven standalone trigeneration solar system coupled with energy storage for green hydrogen, freshwater, and cooling production

This study presents a techno-economic comparison of two solar-driven multi-generation systems, one thermally driven and the other electrically driven, for the co-production of hydrogen, potable water, and cooling under identical climatic conditions and equal annual production targets. An hourly dynamic mathematical model is constructed and solved in MATLAB/Simulink for the entire year, incorporating thermal storage for the thermally driven system and battery storage for the electrically driven system. The results indicate a trade-off between maximum outputs and overall utilization. The thermally driven system attains higher peak hourly outputs, whereas the electrically driven system operates for longer hours with superior energy and exergy efficiencies of 17.08 % and 11.65 %, respectively. From an economic perspective, the electrically driven system demonstrates lower levelized costs for both hydrogen production and cooling, as well as a shorter payback period of 3.43 years compared to 7.89 years for the thermally driven system. Both systems achieve annual CO 2 savings of 49.76 t-CO 2 . Moreover, the sensitivity analysis indicates that the electrically driven system’s levelized output costs are more influenced by reductions in the investment costs of energy harvesting and storage than the thermally driven system.