Energy and Exergy Analysis of Integrated Systems of Buildings and District Energy Plants

The purpose of the paper is to influence governments throughout the world to achieve massiveimprovements in energy and exergy performance in their respective countries by legislation and otherpolicy instruments keyed to the overall or integrated energy and exergy performance of energytransformation systems.Energy transformation systems include: all types of buildings; electric, heating, and cooling districtpower plants; water treatment plants, energy and water distribution systems; cars, trucks, buses,motorcycles, trains, planes and other powered transportation systems; and manufacturing processes.As a first step, governments should require that buildings, power plants, and distribution systems bedesigned based on forecasted energy and exergy performance and that actual performance becontinuously monitored.This paper simulates the integrated energy and exergy performance of a building and district powerplant under three different operating conditions to illustrate the value of this methodology. Onlyelectric, heating, cooling, lighting, and electric loads are considered.Prevailing practices measure energy performance of isolated energy systems. For example, heatingefficiency, cooling efficiency, and lighting efficiency are computed separately. The simulationdemonstrates that this policy is seriously flawed.