Case Study of Design and Implementation of a Thermal Energy Storage System

Abstract

Thermal energy storage is one of the most important methods of demand-side load management. It can significantly reduce the peak power demand of air conditioning system in buildings. The results of a research entitled *Feasibility study of applying cooling thermal storage systems in Iran* indicated that implementing thermal energy storage systems in commercial and official buildings, which are left at night has considerable advantages in comparison to compression cooling systems from life cycle costs viewpoint. Following the aforementioned study, a project entitled `Design and development of an air conditioning thermal energy storage system' was defined and stalled and eventually a cooling system based on ice storage was experimentally implemented for an office building. The equipment of this system is controlled in a manner that the whole system operates in one of the operation modes with regards to cooling load, time and date. For supervising this cooling system, a programmable logic controller has been selected and programmed for all the operation modes' algorithms which continuously checks cooling load, time and date and based on these criteria initializes the proper operation mode and controls the system in the selected mode. One of the most important objectives of this project was to convince the energy related organizations' officials to support technology transferring and extend application of these systems in Iran to decrease peak demands and obtain cost saving benefits.