The closed greenhouse concept has been studied in this paper. The closed greenhouse can be considered as the largest commercial solar building. In principle, it is designed to maximize the utilization of solar energy by use of seasonal storage. In an ideal fully closed greenhouse, there is no ventilation window. Therefore, the excess heat must be removed by other means. In order to utilize the excess heat at a later time, long-and/or short-term thermal storage technology (TES) should be integrated. A theoretical model has been derived to evaluate the performance of various design scenarios. The closed greenhouse is compared with a conventional greenhouse using a case study to guide the energy analysis and verify the model. A new parameter has been defined in this paper in order to compare the performance of the closed greenhouse concept in different configurations - the Surplus Energy Ratio showing the available excess thermal energy that can be stored in the TES system and the annual heating demand of the greenhouse. From the energy analysis it can be concluded that SER is about three in the ideal fully closed greenhouse. Also, there is a large difference in heating demand between the ideal closed and conventional greenhouse configurations Finally, a preliminary thermo-economic study has been assessed in order to investigate the cost feasibility of various closed greenhouse configurations, like ideal closed; semi closed and partly closed conditions. Here, it was found that the design load has the main impact on the payback period. In the case of the base load being chosen as the design load, the payback period for the ideal closed greenhouse might be reduced by 50%. On the other hand, glazing type, ventilation ratio, and the closed area portion have a minor impact on the payback period. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.