If you are looking for apartments or houses in the UAE but particularly in the newer developments of Dubai, you will see properties listed with amenities that state “Chiller Free”. This could be a bit confusing for those not familiar with the term. Here we will try to explain what that means, explain the technicalities behind that, and the cost implications when renting or buying an apartment. Let us begin by stating that this term applies to air-conditioning and not refrigeration.

Air-Conditioning

All houses and apartments in the UAE are air-conditioned. As air-conditioning technology has evolved over the years the new apartments adopt the latest solution that is available to them. Older apartments tend to have air-conditioning units in individual rooms, either mounted near the window or a port in the wall or a split unit with a wall-mounted indoor unit. This air-conditioning is the very minimum that you will have in all apartments. The next generation of apartments have ducted split units that have no visible air-conditioning units but the ducts are in the recessed roof hidden from view. These are similar in technology to the split units with ducting better direct airflow and each unit capable of cooling multiple rooms or a zone of the house. As an example a ducted split unit will be used to cool the bedrooms and another ducted split unit will be used to cool the living room and kitchen. The splitting of the zones in a manner allows the occupant to turn off units depending on the time of the day. Mostly the living room units can be turned off or the temperature adjusted to a more efficient setting when there is less occupancy. All these units function with an outdoor compressor unit and the entire air-conditioning system uses electricity. Your costs associated with these types of units are restricted to the amount of electricity these units consume. Increasing when they run for longer periods and decreasing when they run less to maintain the set temperature.

District Cooling

Air-conditioning consumes a lot of energy and therefore finding ways to reduce the energy demand while maximising the cooling is the trend in the industry. It is clear that if the air-conditioning is more centralised it improves the overall efficiency of the air-conditioning system. Thus newer solutions involve centralised air-conditioning systems. In this solution for air-conditioning all the energy spent to cool happens in one centralised location from where chilled water is piped all through the building. Each individual apartment or zone of the house merely has a fan unit that extracts the heat from the apartment by cycling air over the heat exchanger with chilled water. The fan unit is controlled by the thermostat in the zone and depending on the temperature setting it runs the fan till the desired temperature is achieved. Taking this same centralised approach to air-conditioning in a greater scale entire districts consisting of multiple buildings or 100s of individual houses are piped with chilled water from a District Cooling Station. These district cooling stations are often in a central location to the buildings and houses and are operated in parallel to water pumping or electrical substations. So in addition to utility providers providing electricity and water, they provide chilled water for air-conditioning.

Base Load and Demand Charges

Now that we have explained the technology let us break down how it affects your utility bills. In the case of regular air-conditioning as stated before you pay for the electricity you consume. In the case of centralised or district cooling solutions, you pay for the electricity and the amount of chilled water you use. The chilled water you consume is often split into 2 charges, the base load charge, and the demand charge. The base load charge is for having the ability to use the chilled water, it is like paying for having your telephone connected. The additional demand charge is for how much of the chilled water you have consumed for your cooling purposes. This base load charge is particularly vexing because, during the cooler months of the year, you would continue to pay the base load charges despite there being no demand for air-conditioning. Which naturally drives up your annual utility bills. The need for a base load charge is because the cost of running the centralised unit does not go away if the demand is smaller or greater. And even during the cooler months, some level of air-conditioning is still required. Tenants and occupants grew vary of these charges and began to avoid renting or buying these apartments.

Chiller Free Explained

Thus “Chiller Free” was promoted by removing the base load costs from the air-conditioning utility charges. Some interpret this to mean that air-conditioning is free, but this is not the case. You are still required to pay the demand charge part of your utility bill, but this is within reason and you pay for the chilled water you consume. The base load charge is now applied to annual maintenance & facility charges to the owner and consequently, the annual rent has increased to compensate for the higher annual maintenance & facility fees that the owner pays.

If you are living in the newest apartments you are most likely in an apartment with a centralised or district cooling solution. These apartments are luxurious units and centrally located so you are indeed well placed to justify the rent that you pay. District cooling solutions in addition to being more energy efficient are good for the overall impact of air-conditioning on the environment. In other words, it is the more eco-friendly solution. These air-conditioning units are also very quiet and thus the interior of these apartments is serene ompared to the older solutions, further justifying the progress towards these newer solutions. And that is why this will be the air-conditioning technology for all new apartments in the UAE.

• Photo by Mubaris Nendukanni on Unsplash