DUBAI - The Emirates Central Cooling Systems Corporation, Empower, the world's largest district cooling services provider, announced that 80 percent of the construction of its new plant at Jumeirah Village has been completed, as part of Empower's strategy to provide high quality and environmentally-friendly district cooling services to its customers.

Following its construction, the world’s first unmanned and fully-automated district cooling plant will have a capacity of 50,000 Refrigeration Tonnes.

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

"The construction of the world's first unmanned district cooling plant is taking place, as per schedule. The new cooling plant will be connected to Empower’s state-of-the-art Command Control Centre, which uses the Advanced SCADA system with a capacity to read two million units of data per minute, related to cooling towers, chillers, transformers, water supply, and more. The continuation in building the district cooling pipeline network in the Jumeirah Village area is also progressing, in parallel with the construction of the new plant," said Ahmad Bin Shafar, CEO of Empower.

Bin Shafar explained that Empower adopted 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 percent. 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, Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai, were also utilised, he added.

© Copyright Emirates News Agency (WAM) 2019.