Empower’s Command Control Centre can link more than 100 plants serving more than 1,000 buildings and 100,000 units

Empower, the world’s largest district cooling services provider, announced today that its state-of-the-art, world-class Command Control Centre (CCC) has started monitoring the activities of 26 of its 62 plants, through an advanced, high-performance smart network. The new centre has capacity to serve 74 additional plants in the future.

This was announced at the official inauguration of the SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) by H.E Saeed Mohammed Al Tayer, MD & CEO, Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA), and Chairman of Empower. He was accompanied by H.E Ahmad Bin Shafar, Empower’s Chief Executive Officer as well as other officials from DEWA and Empower.

“This is a major step in Dubai’s march towards conservation by providing environmental friendly and more efficient district cooling services, as part of the implementation of the ‘Green Economy for Sustainable Development’ initiative launched by H.H Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE, Ruler of Dubai,” said H.E Saeed Mohammed Al Tayer, after the opening ceremony. 

HE Al Tayer added that Empower has become the world’s largest district cooling services provider. He explained that through the services of this centre a large segment of consumers of district cooling in Dubai will receive more efficient and sustainable services. The centre also ensures high-performance control as it adopts precise and highly advanced measurement systems. This first of its kind investment will provide multi-level measurement tools to track and manage different aspects of district cooling.

Empower said the smart connectivity of its plants through this centre was being powered by the communications infrastructure of Dubai. It is currently monitoring 350 buildings, reflecting 10,000 individual single unit meters, and could add around 650 more buildings, and around 90,000 more individual unit meters.

“Empower’s Command Control Centre is providing a holistic smart monitoring of all the operations of Empower plants in Dubai to ensure smooth, reliable and sustainable district cooling services across the Emirate,” said HE Ahmad Bin Shafar. “The technologies used by the centre enable Empower to monitor all the operations of its plants that have a total production capacity of over 1 million Refrigeration Tons (RT).”

He added that the advanced technologies and systems used by the centre provide real time access to information, define supply and consumption patterns in each building unit through a click of a button, in line with Dubai Government’s vision of making Dubai a unique smart city in the world.

“The centre will give us insights into the consumption patterns of apartments, offices, and commercial establishments as well as their needs from the district cooling grid accurately. This will help us to deploy our resources effectively on the plants and networks in general and in specific plant networks at peak times during summer periods. It also assists us to plan preventive maintenance schedule during winter months more effectively,” said Bin Shafar.

“This represents a new chapter in the history of district cooling operations in the world, thanks to the state of the art centralized Enterprise level SCADA system. CCC also uses programmable logic controls (PLC) which ensure that the data is more accurate, and well archived. This will help us to make decisions based on real data to achieve best results,” concluded Bin Shafar.

The CCC is a global first in the world in district cooling and is a testimony to Empower’s strong commitment to enhancing customer satisfaction through reliable and consistent service round the clock, according to Bin Shafar.

Empower currently operates more than 1 Million RT, providing environmentally responsible district cooling services to large-scale real estate developments, such as 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, among others.