Thermal Storage for District Cooling—Implications for Renewable Energy Transition

Abstract

The utilization of air conditioning in public and private buildings is continuously increasing globally and is one of the major factors fueling the growth of the global electricity demand. The higher utilization of renewable energy sources and the transition of the electricity-generating industry to renewable energy sources requires significant energy storage in order to avoid supply–demand mismatches. This storage-regeneration process entails dissipation, which leads to higher energy generation loads. Both the energy generation and the required storage may be reduced using thermal energy storage to provide domestic comfort in buildings. The development and utilization of thermal storage, achieved by chilled water, in a community of two thousand buildings located in the North Texas region are proven to have profound and beneficial effects on the necessary infrastructure to make this community independent of the grid and self-sufficient with renewable energy. The simulations show that both the necessary photovoltaics rating and the capacity of the electric energy storage system are significantly reduced when thermal storage with a chilled water system is used during the air conditioning season.

Keywords

• air conditioning
• renewable energy
• district cooling
• microgrids
• grid-independent buildings
• thermal storage