This paper proposes a novel energy and exergy based methodology for designing and optimal short-term planning of an air to air heat pump-based combined cool, heat and power (CCHP) system driven by a solar dish Stirling heat engine (SDSHE). An absorber and thermal storage tank are employed to absorb and store collected thermal energy for continuous energy supplying when sunlight is insufficient and night-time. In this paper, an air to air heat pump (AAHP) is proposed to cool and heat a benchmark residential building under hot and cold weather conditions, respectively. Using of solar energy and AAHP5 in the proposed CCHP system which does not use any fossil fuel, not only gives more chances for significant reduction of CO2 and NOx, but also increases the economic saving in fuel consumption. The mathematical model and the thermodynamic analysis of the proposed tri-generation microgrid have been provided as a mixed-integer nonlinear, program and solved using SBB solver under GAMS optimization software to minimize the energy procurement cost considering SDSHE and AAHP's constraints. Furthermore, four cases are studied to confirm the influence of battery storage system (BSS) and demand response programs (DRPs) on energy scheduling problem. The results demonstrate that the energy procurement cost is low where the effects of DRPs and BSS are considered, simultaneously. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.