DUBAI 18 December 2018: Emirates Central Cooling Systems Corporation (Empower), is to build a new 50,000 Refrigeration Tonnes (RT), unmanned district cooling plant in Jumeirah Village Circle (JVC).
Built at a total cost of Dh250 million, the project is part of company’s expansion plan of increasing the number of district cooling plants across Dubai, to serve major projects. This is also part of company’s ongoing efforts to spread district cooling services in Dubai, and utilize Artificial Intelligence technologies.
The JVC plant is the world’s first unmanned and fully automated district cooling plant. It uses 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, said Wam.
“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,” said Ahmad bin Shafar, CEO of Empower.
The company confirms 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.