In this paper, the influence of the addition of fins and the use of two different heat transfer fluids (water and a commercial silicone) have been experimentally tested and compared in four latent heat thermal energy storage systems, based on the shell-and-tube heat exchanger concept, using paraffin RT58 as phase change material. Three European institutions were involved under the framework of the MERITS project. A common approach (temperature and power profiles), and five different key performance indicators have been defined and used for the comparison: energy charged, average power, 5-min peak power, peak power to energy ratio, and time. For the same heat transfer fluid, results showed that finned designs (4.7-9.4 times more heat transfer surface) showed an improvement of up to 40%. On the contrary, for the same design, water (which has a specific heat 3 times higher and a thermal conductivity 4.9 times higher than silicone Syltherm 800), yielded results up to 44% higher. (C) 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.