West Bay District Cooling Scheme reaches new phase

This marks a significant level of progress in the West Bay Scheme with work expected to commence as soon as December of this year and completion expected for 2006 when chilled water will be produced in line with the pipe network programme.

District Cooling works by supplying chilled water from a central location to a number of buildings via a network of pipes, removing the need to have chillers in each building and thus greatly reducing capital costs and running expenses for building owners. In addition, the system is environmentally friendly and virtually maintenance free.

'As a result of its unique portfolio of benefits, demand for District Cooling has exceeded our expectations,' said Qatar Cool General Manager, Colin Goulding. 'This industrial style plant, with its state of the art control system, will be the ultimate in reliability, and will use half the energy of a traditional system.'

The building work contract, which is expected to be worth in the region of QR74 million when all the building work is complete, is the first stage of a total QR300 million investment programme over the next two years. The building work will follow the laying of the pipe work, which will connect buildings to the central cooling plants.

Not only is District Cooling extremely cost efficient, the associated environmental advantages are significant. 50% energy saving means considerable reductions in power generation and the production of Co2, the major cause of global warming. District Cooling uses environmentally friendly refrigerants in a contained and controlled environment which, combined with rigorous health and safety standards, means less potential damage to the Ozone layer.

The Scheme will be able to supply more than 51,000 refrigerating tons of cooling, enough to meet the cooling requirements of 60 typical office buildings. Further schemes are planned for the future and it is estimated that over QR1billion will be invested in developing District Cooling schemes for Qatar over the next five years.

Qatar District Cooling Company, known as Qatar Cool, is a private sector joint venture company owned 50.5% by United Development Company (UDC), 44.5% by the Dubai registered National District Cooling Company (Tabreed) and 5% by private Qatari investors.