09/09/2021 20:06
Clarín.com
International
Updated 09/10/2021 10:50
The city of
Shenzhen
, in southern China, is one of the great technological centers of China and the world, but it has a problem: the climate is almost tropical and it is very hot and humid almost all year round.
This undermines industrial development and
the comfort of its 10 million inhabitants.
The city is a
modern metropolis
that connects Hong Kong with the mainland. So big and powerful is the city, that days ago the central authorities of China issued a new plan with the aim of continuing to develop a
cooperation zone
for the metropolis Shenzhen and the
Hong Kong Special Administrative Region
(HKSAR). According to the plan, the reform and opening of the Qianhai Shenzhen-Hong Kong Modern Service Industry Cooperation Zone will be comprehensively deepened.
In this context, the solution to the weather problem does not involve installing more air conditioners in homes, businesses and shopping centers, but rather developing a pharaonic project: cooling entire neighborhoods with
a large station that cools entire neighborhoods
from a distance.
View of the Ping An International Financial Center of the Chinese city of Shenzhen, seen from the territory of Hong Kong.
Photo: EFE
The person in charge of developing the project is the company
Qianhai Energy Company
and the plan has the support of Chinese public institutions.
Since its inception in 2014, the company has managed to install and operate three stations that, at the moment, offer air to businesses and public areas, but not private homes.
The development is called the
District Cooling System
(DCS) and is already taking its first steps in the Qianhai neighborhood.
This is so because its operation takes a long time and is only effective if it works for more than
eight hours in a row, continuously
.
Since this is not the case in homes, those in charge prefer not to provide services to homes due to an
energy saving issue.
The Shenzhen metropolitan area is inhabited by about 10 million pardons.
Its objective is precisely that: not to spend so much energy on refrigeration and to centrally assume consumption in the warmest times of the year.
Preliminary reports suggest that these
public air conditioners
can save about 130 million kilowatts of electricity annually.
With the stipulated 10 stations, the city of Shenzhen expects to supply
400,000 tons of fresh air
to an area of almost 20 square kilometers of the city.
This massive cooling system requires great planning and a very particular architecture for the distribution of cold to be effective. The recent construction of Shenzhen, which has
grown exponentially in the last 20 years,
allows this system to work, so far efficiently.