India is primarily a tropical country with a mix of wet and dry tropical weather. Cooling technologies have become an absolute necessity for such climatic conditions. Currently, the primary cooling technologies in India are fans and individual AC units in residential spaces. Commercial / office spaces rely on centralised cooling systems to meet the cooling requirements of a single building. District Cooling systems can help meet the cooling requirement of multiple buildings, reduce the overall space and equipment requirement, and can pose as an alternative solution to the conventional standalone system currently being used.
A district cooling system could cover spaces ranging from as small as a campus to large portions of a city. DCS have proven to reduce GHG emissions and can contribute towards India’s energy efficiency targets. For a developing country like ours with increasing urbanisation, DCS holds tremendous potential. With this background, AEEE formed this Working Group (WG) in 2022.
The WG is intended to be a platform for AEEE members to generate awareness and create new opportunities for stakeholders to access District cooling technology-specific information, networking, exchange business, policy support and implementation ideas, capacity building, etc. The WG would also act as a platform for the key DCS industry players to deliberate and explore upcoming opportunities in the District Cooling sector, in addition to being heard as one voice regarding DCS. In the long-term, the outcome of the WG can be utilized to create a DCS Business Centre/CoE/Solution Exchange and catalyse the technology’s development and implementation in India.
