Thermal Storage Technologies for Space Cooling and Heating

Storing thermal energy is not a new concept; harvesting ice for summer applications and the ice trade was a nineteenth-century industry. Thermal storage technologies enable excess thermal energy to be stored and used later. Balancing of energy demands between day and night (daily storage) or winter and summer (seasonal storage) and reducing the peak demands are the example benefits of thermal storage technologies. This chapter presents short-term cold thermal energy storage technologies and seasonal thermal energy storage technologies, and discusses their operational strategies. Full storage operation, partial storage with demand limiting and load levelling operating strategies are discussed.