Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Energy Conversion and Management journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/enconman A techno-economic comparison of a photovoltaic/thermal organic Rankine cycle with several renewable hybrid systems for a residential area in Rayen, Iran Mohammad Hossein Jahangir ⁎ , Seyed Ali Mousavi, Mohammad Amin Vaziri Rad Renewable Energies and Environmental Department, Faculty of New Sciences and Technologies, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran ARTICLEINFO Keywords: Hybrid energy systems Renewable energy Organic Rankine cycle Exergy analysis Economic analysis HOMER software ABSTRACT The main objective of this investigation is to introduce an economic and feasible hybrid energy system to provide the required load for a household in Rayen, Iran. The case study is a building with 20 families. The power consumption of a family at a peak is considered by 4 kW. So, this combined system must provide a power of 80 kW. First a hybrid organic Rankine cycle is proposed and assessed by exergy and exergoeconomic methods. The results of exergy analysis indicate the overall exergy efciency of the system is 7.29%. As well as, the greatest exergy destruction is related to the photovoltaic panels with a value of 337.16 kJ. The outcomes of the exergoeconomic assessment showed that, the highest and lowest capital investment cost rate belong to the photovoltaic panels (54233 $/year) and condenser (7092 $/year), respectively. Also, the product cost rate is calculated by 5.2 million $/year. In continue, to identify the key parameters which infuence on the total per- formance of the ORC system, a parametric analysis is done. Because of the hybrid organic Rankine cycle has a high amount of the cost of energy, seven renewable hybrid energy systems are proposed and modeled by HOMER software. The results show the optimum energy system for this residential area is the hybrid PV – wind-diesel – battery. This confguration has a net positive cost of 268,592 $ and a cost of energy of 0.197 $/kWh. At the end of this study, to fnd the impact of the variations of the fuel cost and peak load on system performance, a parametric analysis was carried out. 1. Introduction According to the increase of the energy demand in recent years, applying sustainable energy systems with high efciency and no pol- lution, have been considered by many scholars [1]. Renewable energy resources can be considered as a proper candidate to provide the re- quired energy demand of human [2]. Solar energy resource is one of the renewable energies, which can be applied for producing heating load, cooling load and electricity (photovoltaic technology) [3]. The most important and valuable advantage of solar energy is availability in most of the countries [4]. As well as, Applying solar energy can be decreased many challenges such as global warming, acidic rains, requirements for transmission lines in the power grid and CO 2 emissions [5]. In last years, many investigations have been conducted about the combination of solar energy with power production systems, such as organic Rankine cycle (ORC) and Kalina cycle. In [6], a solar-driven Kalina cycle with a variable concentration ratio was assessed by the energy analysis method. The outcomes indicated that in 850 W/m 2 and 150 W/m 2 , the output electricity is obtained by of 233.1 kW and 40.6 kW, respectively. Amongst the power production cycles, the Rankine cycle generates the most amount of electricity [7]. The common working fuid which is utilized in this cycle is water, but this working fuid due to its saturation curve, is suitable for high-temperature heat source. Since, the organic fuids can solve this problem, the organic Rankine cycle has been se- lected for this study. To assess the performance of each thermodynamic cycle, exergy assessment is one of the powerful methods, which many researchers apply this method [8]. By applying the conventional exergy evaluation, the amount of irreversibility and exergy efciency of each system can be obtained [9]. But for determining the origin and cost of these irreversibilities, the exergoeconomic analysis is performed [10]. In continue, some of the investigations which are carried out about the energy, exergy and exergoeconomic analyses of thermodynamic sys- tems, have been presented. In [11], a combined Kalina cycle which is driven by solar energy resource, was evaluated thermodynamically. According to the obtained outcomes, the overall destroyed exergy rate was calculated with a value of 1163.91 kW, which 23.21% of this https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enconman.2019.05.010 Received 6 March 2019; Received in revised form 23 April 2019; Accepted 3 May 2019 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail address: mh.jahangir@ut.ac.ir (M.H. Jahangir). Energy Conversion and Management 195 (2019) 244–261 Available online 10 May 2019 0196-8904/ © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. T