Empower sweats over district cooling
Provider denies responsibility as cooling systems fail at onset of summer heat
Empower, the UAE based district cooling provider, has disavowed responsibility for the failure of the district cooling systems in the Skycourts buildings complex in Dubailand.
In a report by local news website, Emirates 24/7, the firm said that its equipment was not to blame for the failure of the district cooling system in the six tower Dubai landmark. Instead, it pointed the finger of blame at the building management company for Skycourts.
Residents at the luxury residential development have been without air conditioning for a number of days as the height of summer approaches and temperatures soar to above 40°C.
“We regret to inform that there has been a cooling issue in the whole Skycourts buildings…the reason for the disturbance in the service was attributable to a technical issue in the Empower facilities…therefore [we] could not provide the required standard cooling temperature to Skycourts buildings,” the Home Owners Association, managers of the complex, said in a statement to the news website.
“We are in direct contact with Empower since the issue [was] identified and they have assured us that their teams are currently working around the clock to resolve it,” the association’s management said.
However, in a bizarre twist, Empower has now denied the onus of responsibility, and instead singled out the real estate company for blame, stating that issues at the buildings have caused the problem where residents cannot get cooling into their apartments.
“A clear evidence of Empower’s non-involvement in the failure is that there is a major imbalance in the secondary circuit which is managed by the real estate company and resulted in extra cooling in corridors, while apartments do not get sufficient amounts of cooling,” it said in a statement.
“It would be obvious to any person that this means that the cooling service was reaching the building; however, due to technical problems at the secondary circuit end, a huge imbalance was taking place,” it added in a statement.
It explained further that the secondary circuit offered by Skycourts to tenants of the six towers was not functioning properly.
“This is not the responsibility of Empower. We are merely the primary supplier of the service that goes to Skycourts, which delivers the service to its tenants through its network,” the company said.
