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SUMMARY A parametric analysis is conducted for space cooling systems based on cold water flowing, during the night, within regularly arranged pipes embedded in a layer of phase change material (PCM), located among the structural layers of the ceiling. The introduced PCM layer in conjunction with night cooling add to the usual ceiling cooling systems offers the advantages of low energy consumption, high cool storage capacity, operation under reduced night electricity price, smoothing of electricity consumption by eliminating daily peak loads, improved thermal comfort and elimination of ceiling dripping. Our parametric analysis is based on a transient three-dimensional finite-difference solution of the related heat-transfer problem for various values of all the main system parameters. PCM phase change process is simulated by using the effective thermal capacity function, which is determined experimentally for PCM suitable for air-conditioning applications. Our tests showed that the main parameters of the system are pipe spacing, PCM layer thickness, pipe depth within the ceiling, cooling water inlet temperature, night cooling duration and PCM properties (thermal conductivity, phase change heat and ends of phase change temperature range). The effect of all the above parameters is analysed and suggestions are made for selecting the proper combinations of their values in order to obtain the lowest energy consumption in conjunction with the highest level of thermal comfort. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]