Emirates Central Cooling Systems Corporation (Empower), the world’s largest district cooling services provider, announced that 80% construction work has been completed of its new plant at Jumeirah Village, which is the world’s first unmanned and fully-automated district cooling plant. Upon completion, the plant will have a total capacity of 50,000 Refrigeration Tons (RT).

This is part of Empower’s strategy to develop its infrastructure using the 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.

Empower highlighted that first phase of the plant is expected to be in operation by end of year 2019, and will serve the customers in Jumeirah Village Area. The plant uses 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 optimize the usage of on and off peak hours, and Treated Sewage Effluent (TSE) technology to protect natural resources.

“Construction of the world’s first unmanned district cooling plant is taking place as per the schedule and with no delay. 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 2 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,” said Ahmad Bin Shafar, CEO of Empower.

Empower positively contributes to the implementation of  the vision of UAE’s wise leadership, which pays pronounced attention to sustainability, and to addressing the challenges of climate change, which is a real obstacle to growth and prosperity

Bin Shafar stressed that Empower adopts several sustainability strategies, mainly the UAE Vision 2021 and the UAE Energy Strategy 2050, which seeks to increase the contribution of clean energy in the total energy mix to 50%, the National Climate Change Plan 2017-2050, and the long-term national initiative to build a green economy in the UAE under the slogan ‘A green economy for sustainable development’, launched by His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, which lead the UAE to become pioneer in the field of the new green economy globally.

Empower provides district cooling services to more than 1,090 buildings, catering to more than 100,000 customers. The company operates more than 1.43 Million Refrigeration Tons (RT), providing environmentally friendly district cooling services to large-scale real estate developments, such as Bluewaters, Jumeirah Group, Business Bay, Jumeirah Beach Residence, Dubai International Financial Centre, Palm Jumeirah, Jumeirah Lake Towers, Ibn Battuta Mall, Discovery Gardens, Dubai Healthcare City, Dubai World Trade Centre Residences and Dubai Design District, International Media Production Zone and others.