Dubai, UAE, 10 July 2018: There will be a greater uptake of inverter VRV units in the UAE market, said Mohammad Badri, Director, Galaxy Cooling Technologies, owing to a growing need for energy-efficient technology, compared to conventional air conditioning systems. Badri said this after a recent announcement that Daikin has entered into a partnership with the company. Galaxy Cooling Technologies will be representing Daikin and its range of residential and commercial products across the UAE as an authorised dealer. “Dubai is leading this way [in the adoption of VRV units],” he said, “while Abu Dhabi is catching up. Sharjah and Northern Emirate markets are still dominant with DX Decorative/DX Ducted split units and chilled water units. VRV is still to penetrate into these markets.”

Outlining major factors driving the growth of VRV systems in the market, Badri cited growing number of low and medium-height residential and commercial buildings as one, stressing that there are not as many high-rise buildings announced for construction. Other factors, Badri said, include the government drive to provide affordable housing (villas) to its citizens, large districts of villa construction announced for sale to expats and investors. Additionally, he said the high energy-saving potential and easy and minimum maintenance of VRV systems as well as the focus of major players on providing technologically advanced refrigerants for air conditioning, makes a case for VRV.

Touching on the advantages, Badri said the high performance of equipment, high energy efficiency, lower failure risk, and greater load management potential, modular and flexible installations are factors “propelling the growth of the VRV system market”. “Another major driver,” he said, “is that VRV offers greatest diversity and lowest electrical connected load when compared to DX Decorative/DX Ducted split units in a building/villa, if people were to choose VRV.”

Badri also highlight bottlenecks with regard to adoption of VRV systems among stakeholders in the UAE. “Since VRV is a technology-oriented system,” he said, “it is generally seen to be higher first cost compared to conventional DX Decorative/DX Ducted split units and chilled water units.” Badri said while VRV technology offers significant savings in operating and maintenance costs “stakeholders often see this first costs as bottleneck”. Badri stressed: “By applying proper tools to calculate ROI/financial paybacks, this bottleneck can be overcome. Greater engineering technology into inverter controlled variable compressor pumping is leading into longer refrigerant pipe length adaptations reaching almost 90 metres or more vertical heights.”

Badri added that proper training in installation will further encourage adoption of VRV and overcome existing bottlenecks, pointing to the wealth of knowledge being offered by Daikin through its reference guide, which, he said guides installers correctly about the way the units have to be handled, installed and connected with each other, with indoor and outdoor units, including piping, wiring and control systems. Additionally, Badri said, Best Practices Guides are available for after-sales service and maintenance and that Daikin, along with Galaxy Cooling Technologies, have invested heavily in training of its engineers and technicians, in their global training centre, to meet engineering service expectations of consultants and clients.

Hannah Jo Uy is Assistant Editor at Climate Control Middle East magazine. She may be contacted at hannah@cpi-industry.com