Olofsson ... cost-effective solution.
Solar plant sets cool Dubai milestone
01 September 2010
DUBAI'S first-ever solar-powered cooling plant is now up and running with the help of Scandinavian technology, helping air-condition an office building in the UAE city.
The plant uses 161 sq m of vacuum tube collectors from Irish manufacturer Kingspan Renewables, which provide enough heat for six small-size absorption chillers with a 10-kW cooling capacity by Swedish company Climatewell. The chillers cover half of the cooling demand of a 6,000 sq m office building, which also includes a training facility and a warehouse.
The new office of Esab, a leading supplier of welding products based in Dubai, is a showcase structure for an efficient solar cooling system. Esab pushed for the investment, which was entirely financed from private sources, because the corporation was concerned about the environment and the operation costs of air-conditioning in a hot and humid city such as Dubai.
UAE contractor Pax Kent won the tender in 2009 and together with its principal office in Sweden, Scandinavian Cooling, Pax Kent became sub-contractor for providing a turnkey HVAC solution for the project. Kingspan and Climatewell supplied the equipment to the Scandinavians, who designed an efficient air-conditioning solution.
“The design of the building and the solar cooling solution made the joint investment not more expensive than a conventional solution,” says Climatewell Group CEO Per Olofsson.
“We have cut the needed peak power in half by using the building as an energy storage and we have cut energy consumption in half by using solar cooling,” adds Lars Olof Johansson, senior design engineer of Scandinavian Cooling/Pax Kent.
The six Climatewell chillers and the back-up compression chillers deliver cooled water to the cooling coils in the air handling units. The chilled air is distributed from there throughout the building via hollow cores in concrete slabs, thus utilising the thermal mass of the concrete to obtain peak load reduction.”
The annual solar share of the system is estimated to be 50 per cent of the already reduced cooling demand.
“Depending on the season, the share of solar cooling is going to vary between some 30 and 100 per cent of the total cooling load,” explains Olofsson.
