Industry focus: Gulf district cooling on the rise

[More Images]



Nomi Ahmad, regional director, power plants, Middle East, Wartsila

What services do you provide the district cooling industry?

Our product for the DC industry is DCAP, which stands for District Cooling and Power. DCAP is a combined chilling and power plant which uses very efficient prime movers to generate electricity, for driving compressor chillers and uses the waste heat from the power plant, to drive vapour absorption chillers to make additional chilled water.

Excess electricity can be sold by the electric utility to customers in close proximity (ie distribution level) to the plant without incurring transformer and line losses. This is not a new paradigm; many countries in cooler climates such as Europe, North America and North Asia utilise CHP for district heating. DCAP is the mirror equivalent of CHP for the Middle East where air conditioning increases electric loads up to 60% in the summer months.

What district cooling projects have you been involved in?

So far none.  We have been involved in many CHP projects globally and have three references of DCAP, two being at Madrid and Milan airports which the DCAP plants not only provide chilled and heated water for cooling and heating, but also provide reliable power for the airports. In the Middle East, the convention has been to use mechanically driven chillers running on electricity because many of the electric utilities maintain monopolistic stances on production of power.

There are also subsidies in the system, which makes it difficult to compete with the utility’s power tariffs (even though the utility’s production cost may be higher).

Advertisement

FEATURED COMMENT Please click here to comment on this article

While we believe we have a great solution that is far more efficient, far better for the environment, far more economical for the system, I am afraid that it will take some time for the electric utilities and policy planners to look at CHP systems as a way to reduce costs and facilitate their development and implementation. 30% less power consumed, and 50% less fuel consumed are certainly substantial enough numbers, we believe, to be taken seriously.

How are you going about changing this?

By having a public debate about the issues in the electric sector and the benefits a solution such as DCAP can bring to a country. We are in discussions with electric utilities in the region but at the end of the day if the utilities have subsidies, then are they really concerned about efficiency and reducing cost?

It is a known fact that the Middle East has amongst the highest per capita power consumptions in the world – this trend clearly cannot continue, not for the carbon footprint that we are creating and not for the subsidies, which our governments are providing. We have to take this discussion to the people who are writing the bill for the subsidies. Our product and solutions can actually reduce the cost hence reduce the subsidies. So it’s a bit complicated to navigate through bureaucracies and governments but we are hopeful that DCAP will catch some traction in the near future.

What are your company’s aims in the next 18 months?

I hope that in the next 18 months we will have a couple of DCAP installations on the ground. We hope that the financial crisis, state of the economy, the green debate, and the rise of rampant urbanisation will push the leaders to start to focus on efficiency and cost savings. When the policy makers give the utilities the mandate to explore things of this nature this can happen very quickly. We can build a DCAP plant in less than 12 months; the question is how long is it going to take the utilities and policy makers before they are convinced that DCAP can reduce costs and hence the subsidies.

Wartsila Profile

Wartsila provides power solutions, and mainly focuses on the marine and energy markets. It’s product for the district cooling industry is called DCAP which uses waste heat from power plants to make more chilled water.

The firm was founded in Finland and as of 2008 it employed over 18,000 workers in total.

The company was set up in 1834 originally as a saw mill and it has made many changes since.

The firm also makes an effort to have a green ethos.

---