In the real application of designing the Central Solar Heating Plants (CSHP), the present methodology can be beneficial to obtain the optimal sizing of the renewable energy equipment. Furthermore, the proposed framework offers guiding that can serve all project stakeholders to participate in the early design phases or developing business models for the SDHS. Moreover, it is an effective tool to evaluate the techno-economic performance of the CSHP as well its environmental benefits with consideration for the market fluctuation regarding the investment cost and the energy carriers. Furthermore, it can assist in proposing the CSHP as a competitive solution instead of the conventional heating systems, and subsequently, it can promote a clear statement regarding the new clean energy for all Europeans packages.

Aligning with the ambitious EU 2030 climate and energy package for cutting the greenhouse emissions and replacing conventional heat sources with renewable energy shared inside efficient district heating fields, central solar heating plants coupled with seasonal storage (CSHPSS) can have a viable contribution to this goal. However, the technical performance variation combined with inadequate financial assessment and insufficient environmental impact data associated with the deployment of those innovative district heating systems represents a big challenge for the broad implementation of CSHPSS in Europe.

We study the possibility of integrating CSHPSS in the residential sector in various EU members.

The optimization results show that the CSHPSS can achieve a renewable energy fraction above 90% for the investigated climate zones. Also, the environmental assessment shows significant improvement when using the CSHPSS in comparison to a natural gas heating system, and the environmental impact is reduced up to 82.1–86.5%. Considering the incremental tendency in natural gas prices all over EU nowadays, the study of future plant costs confirms its favorable long-term economic feasibility.