Using of heat thermal storage of PCM and solar energy for distributed clean building heating: A multi-level scale-up research

• Carried out a multi-level scale up research of DCBH system. • Prepared PCM with the latent heat of 262.4 kJ/kg and provesd its stability. • Operational cost of DCBH system can save up to 61% compared to centralized heating. • Solar radiation prediction increased the thermal efficiency of PCM tanks by 7.4%. • SC system accounted for 29.9% of heat supply ratio of DCBM system. Solar energy coupled with electric heat storage is a promising energy saving technology for distributed building heating. Energy saving performance of this technology used in buildings has been widely investigated by prototype-scale experiments and numerical assessments. However, the commercial and economic feasibility of this technology during the operational phase of a real building have not been proven yet. This study conducted a comprehensive techno-economic analysis of the electric heat storage system coupled with solar energy installed in a three-story office building (2000 m 2 heating area) in Tianjin, China. The electric heat storage system with the heat storage capacity of 1274.8 MJ was installed on the first floor of the building. The solar collector system with a total heat collection area of 160 m 2 was installed on the roof of the building. Meanwhile, the long short-term memory was used to predict the heat gain of solar collector in order to adjust the quantity of storage heat of storage device. The results indicated that the prepared storage medium possessed an excellent thermal property with a total heat storage capacity of 448.8 kJ/kg within 50–150 °C. The average thermal efficiency of vacuum tube solar collector was 51.3%, its heat gain per square meter per day was 6.5 MJ. The use of the solar radiation prediction model stabilized thermal efficiency of heat storage reservoir at 95.8%. The specific operational cost of this system within an entire heating season was 15.6 renminbi (RMB)/m 2 /season. Distribute clean building heating (DCBH) system can save up to 61% of heating cost compared to the centralized heating. The results showed a great application potential of combination of electric heat storage and solar energy based on solar energy prediction for the heat dispatch of distributed building heating.