This paper conducted a unique availability and economic analysis of two energy hubs (EHs) with different capacities (2 MW and 900 kW). The proposed EH supplies the electricity and heat requirements of a high‐rise residential complex in Tehran. A new index called real availability was introduced and implemented, integrating hourly demand profiles and system failure rates through a novel combination of Markov and Monte Carlo simulations. The economic analysis was conducted based on the real availability of the system and hourly thermal and electricity demand profiles. The results showed that considering the demands of the building has a significant effect on the availability and economic parameters. Because, unlike classical availability analysis, there was no need for all parts to be working for a system to be considered available. The maximum real availability for thermal and electricity was 99.94% (September) and 98.76% (December), respectively, while the real availability commensurate with demand in each month, the classical availability index was constant for the whole year at 98.4% for thermal availability and 96.1% for electricity availability. The economic study results showed that the capital cost for the 2 MW and 900 kW EH systems is 1.5 million USD and 1.01 million USD, respectively. However, after 15 years, the total net present value for the 2 MW was almost 2.53 million USD, while the second scenario had a net present value of about 0.21 million USD. Furthermore, the first scenario could repay the capital investment in 4.4 years, almost 2.6 times shorter than the second scenario. This novel approach can enhance the accuracy of calculating the availability index and decrease calculation time. Thus, this method is highly suitable for complex systems.
Zaroorian et al. (Thu,) studied this question.