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With the increasing need for cooling and the concerns for pollution due to fossil fuel-based energy use, renewable energy is considered an add-on to cooling technologies. The climatic condition in the Middle East, analyzed in this paper, provides the potential to integrate solar energy with the cooling system. Due to the availability of various solar energy and cooling technologies, multiple configurations of solar-cooling systems can be considered to satisfy the cooling demand. The research presented in this paper aims to assess and compare these configurations by considering the energy prices and the installation area. The proposed model is formulated in Mixed-Integer Linear Programming and optimizes the holistic system design and operation. The economic, renewable energy use, and environmental performances of the optimal solution for each configuration are analyzed and compared to the base grid-DCS configuration. Results show that the electricity tariff and the available installation area impact the economic competitiveness of the solar energy integration. When electricity tariff is subsided (low), the conventional grid-based DCS is the most competitive. The PV-DCS configuration is economically competitive among the solar assisted cooling systems, and it can contribute to reducing the environmental impact by 58.3%. The PVT-DCS configuration has the lowest operation cost and the highest environmental performance by decreasing the global warming potential by 89.5%. The T-DCS configuration becomes economically competitive only at high electricity tariffs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

District cooling systems (DCS) are particularly important in the Middle East due to higher overall temperatures on most days of the year. The design, operation, and control of a new DCS should consider the abundant stakeholders and system requirements transformation using the system engineering processes. Integrating these requirements at an early stage in the system model is essential, specifically, the regulation on energy efficiency or system reliability; without such integration, the system may miss some important aspects and lead to higher energy consumption, lower reliability, higher system cost, greater CO 2 emissions and may not satisfy cooling demand of the stakeholders. In this paper, a framework for DCS analysis is proposed by considering inputs, process (core), and outputs. The framework considers the structure and behavior of the DCS system to enhance system design and operation. The core of the framework uses a mathematical model in mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) to optimize the overall DCS cost by integrating the system and stakeholders' requirements. The results obtained from the application of the framework show that addressing the requirements reduces cost and increases energy efficiency, and when the cooling demand is variable, it might be better to have multiple capacities for chillers and chiller storage. The paper is helpful for the decision-makers to understand the impact of requirements and their management in the design, operation, and control of multi-chiller DCS in relief with the cost and energy efficiency. • The proposed framework considers structure/mathematical modeling of a district cooling system. • The DCS requirements impact cost, energy consumption, and emissions of the system. • Analyzing the sequencing can enhance DCS performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]