Ahmad Bin Shafar

DUBAI, UAE, 9 September 2019: Emirates Central Cooling Systems Corporation (Empower) has completed 80% of the construction work of its new plant at Jumeirah Village, in Dubai, the District Cooling utility said through a Press release. The facility is the world’s first unmanned and fully automated District Cooling plant, the utility claimed through the release. Upon completion, the plant will have a total capacity of 50,000 tonnes of refrigeration Tons (TR), the release announced.

According to the release, this is part of Empower’s strategy to develop its infrastructure using advanced smart technologies to meet the increasing demand for District Cooling services and to provide high quality and environmentally friendly District Cooling services to customers.

The release said that the first phase of the plant is expected to be in operation by the end of 2019 and will serve the customers in Jumeirah Village area. The plant will use Artificial Intelligence (AI) to monitor and automatically adjust inflow and outflow of the chilled water, as well as Thermal Energy Storage (TES) technology, which will optimise the usage of on and off peak hours, and Treated Sewage Effluent (TSE) technology to protect natural resources, the release quoted Empower as saying.

“Construction of the world’s first unmanned District cooling plant is taking place as per the schedule and with no delay,” said Ahmad Bin Shafar, CEO, Empower. “The new cooling plant will be connected to Empower’s state-of-the-art Command Control Centre (CCC), which is using the Advanced SCADA system, with the capacity to read two million data per minute related to cooling towers, chillers, transformers, water supply, etc. The continuation of constructing the district cooling pipeline network in Jumeirah Village area is also progressing in parallel with the construction of the new plant.”