Energy Comparison Between Conventional and Chilled Water Thermal Storage Air Conditioning Systems

During the summer of previous years, Kuwait faced a series of power shortages emphasizing the need for urgent commissioning of power generation projects. It is estimated that the demand for electricity is growing at an average of 6.2% per year, encouraged by government subsidies and driven by the rapid and continual expansion in building construction, urban development, and the heavy reliance on Air Conditioning (AC) systems for the cooling of buildings. The Chilled Water Thermal Storage (CWTS) system is one of the available techniques that can be utilized to reduce peak electricity demand of buildings when national electricity consumption is at its highest level. This paper demonstrates that the use of CWTS system reduces the peak power demand and energy consumption of AC systems for design day conditions by 36.7% - 87.5% and 5.4% - 7.2%, respectively. This reduction depends on selected operating strategies as compared with conventional AC system. Furthermore, results show that the annual energy consumption of CWTS systems decreases by between 4.5% and 6.9% compared with conventional systems, where chillers and pumps significantly contribute to this reduction