District cooling

District cooling delivers chilled water to offices, shopping malls, apartments and other kinds of buildings that need indoor cooling.

Through the district cooling network, the cooling plant pumps chilled supply water to buildings. The chilled water is fed into the individual buildings’ own cooling systems through a heat exchanger. 

When the water has cooled the building, it returns to the cooling plant at a higher temperature where it is chilled again and redistributed in a closed loop.

The cold water used in a district cooling system can come from free sources such as sea water, or it can be produced from sources like waste heat with the use of steam turbine-driven or absorption chillers or electric chillers.

District cooling can be produced from local natural resources like sea water, or from chillers running on steam or electricity, which makes it an environmentally friendly option. It is also a reliable and highly secure source of cooling.

District cooling can reduce cooling energy consumption by 50%. It can drastically reduce electricity use during peak demand periods, too. A network with electric chillers for cold storage helps reduce peak electricity demand for cooling in a city by shifting production to periods of the day or night when there is less run on the electrical network.

District cooling is becoming more and more relevant as the need for clean cooling increases worldwide.

In Europe alone, 40% of commercial and institutional buildings have cooling systems and that demand is growing. At the same time, CO2 reduction is high on political agendas.

Because of its combination of renewable and surplus energies, district cooling emits significantly less CO2 than conventional cooling systems and emits no hazardous refrigerants.