Empower Announces Construction Of World's First Unmanned 50,000 RT District Cooling Plant With A Cost Of AED 250m
Ahmad Bin Shafar: "The district cooling plant in JVC will contribute to enhancing the current capacity of Empower's 75 efficient and reliable district cooling plants"
Emirates Central Cooling Systems Corporation (Empower), the world's largest district cooling services provider, announced the beginning of construction of its new 50,000 Refrigeration Tons (RT) unmanned district cooling plant in Jumeirah Village Circle (JVC). The total cost is AED 250 million and this is as part of its expansion process of increasing the number of district cooling plants across Dubai, to serve major projects. This is part of Empower’s ongoing efforts to spread district cooling services in Dubai, and utilize Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies.
The JVC plant is the world’s first unmanned and fully automated district cooling plant. It uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to monitor and automatically adjust inflow and outflow of the chilled water, as well as Advanced SCADA system with the capacity to read 2 million data related to cooling towers, chillers, transformers, water supply etc. It also uses award-winning Treated Sewage Effluent (TSE) and Thermal Energy Storage (TES) technologies to serve chilled water. The plant’s operational efficiency will reach 0.89 KW/t, using 6 water chillers running on 11KV of electricity.
“Empower is increasing its efforts to promote reliable and high-quality district cooling services to customers across Dubai. We are committed in expanding our projects and operations to meet the increasing demand for district cooling. This will improve our infrastructure by targeting new areas and increasing the number of cooling plants such as construction of the new JVC plant. This will also allow the expansion of our current network, which is expected to reach 100,000 customers by the end of 2018. This supports the vision of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, to promote Dubai as the world's most sustainable city, and the city with the lowest carbon footprint in the world by 2050. It also supports the Dubai Integrated Energy Strategy 2030 to reduce energy and water consumption to 30% by 2030, and the Dubai Plan 2021, to make Dubai a smart and sustainable city whose environmental elements are clean, healthy and sustainable,” said Ahmad Bin Shafar, CEO of Empower.
Empower confirmed that the new plant is designed according to the highest international standards, taking into account the standards of sustainable green buildings and the modern urban developments of Dubai, as well as the overall aesthetic appearance of the area and the architecture of surrounding buildings.
The new plant in JVC will be added to Empower’s list of district cooling plants, which is expected to reach 75 plants, by the end of 2018. Empower also expects to increase the number of buildings using district cooling to reach over 1,090 buildings by this year end..
JVC, which was named after its circular shape, is one of the largest residential areas in Dubai. It includes towers, buildings of European architectural style, a number of townhouses, and villas of different sizes.
Empower currently operates over 1.34 Million RT, providing environmentally responsible district cooling services to large-scale real estate developments, such as Jumeirah Group, Jumeirah Beach Residence, Dubai International Financial Centre, Business Bay, Dubai Healthcare City, Jumeirah Lake Towers, Palm Jumeirah, Discovery Gardens, Ibn Battuta Mall, Dubai Design District and International Media Production Zone, among others.
