Integration of Thermal Energy Storage At Building And Neighbourhood Scale

Due to the intermittency of solar energy, thermal energy storage is often required to increase the utilisation of solar thermal resources. From buildinglevel short-term storage systems that can supply daily domestic hot water loads, to centrally located longterm storage systems that can be used to satisfy seasonal space heating loads, numerous storage configurations can be adopted to increase the economic and environmental performance of solar energy systems. In this paper, dynamic simulation models are employed to analyse the impact of storage size, technology, and location on the economic cost and solar energy utilisation of solar energy system. Simulation results, assessed in terms of solar fractions, system efficiencies, and levelized energy costs, suggest that building level seasonal storage configurations outperform all other system configurations for the given case study.