Potential of solar-driven cooling systems in UAE region

The paper proposes a comparison between three solar-powered plant configurations covering the cooling demand of a residential compound in the UAE region: i) centralized district cooling system, ii) 5 th -generation district system and iii) home air conditioning system. A transient numerical model has been developed for each solution. The model includes photovoltaics, battery storage, and electric chillers, and the thermal envelope to evaluate the building cooling loads. An optimization procedure based on particle-swarm algorithms has been implemented with the aim of selecting the best combination of components to achieve a solar fraction of 70% while minimizing budget costs. The simulation results reward solar district cooling with respect to installation costs: -65% compared to domestic air conditioning system and -27% compared to 5 th generation district system. Similarly, in terms of energy savings, the centralized district cooling achieves an annual mean COP of 5.92, and the 5 th -generation network shows an average annual COP equal to 3.70 whilst the home system reports an average COP equal to 2.83.