Due to the national strategy of energy saving and environmental pollutant reduction, combined cooling, heating and power (CCHP) has been employed in China. A CCHP system with thermal energy storage (TES) is used as an energy station, usually consisting of a power generation unit (PGU), an absorption machine (AM), two ground source heat pumps (GSHPs), a storage tank (ST) and two electric chillers (ECs). The available PGU was compared between the gas turbine and the internal combustion engine (ICE), and the hourly operating strategies with different cooling and heating loads were analyzed. The environmental impacts were also calculated. The results show that the ICE is more suitable for the energy station. The TES reduces by 15.8% of the total installed cooling capacity and 37.5% of the total installed heating capacity of the CCHP system. The hourly operating strategies should be changed with the weather condition. The results are very valuable in guiding a CCHP system applied in engineering projects. (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier B.V.