Your Emicool bill: how to pay it and what you're charged for

Who Emicool is

Emirates District Cooling (Emicool) LLC was established in 2003 and is headquartered in Dubai. It is a joint venture between Dubai Investments and Actis (Emicool, FAQs). Its customer service charter says it follows the rules of Dubai's Regulation and Supervision Bureau (RSB) (Emicool, Customer Service Charter).

How to check your Emicool bill

• Customer portal: sign in to Emicool's customer portal to view your monthly invoice, or create an account there if you do not have one (Emicool, FAQs; Emicool, Customer Portal).
• By phone or email: Emicool's call centre is 600 534440, from 8:00 to midnight, every day, and its email is customercare@emicool.com (Emicool, Customers).

For a problem with the cooling itself, Emicool asks you to contact your building's facilities management first (Emicool, FAQs). Its 24-hour number for cooling emergencies is 04 816 0200 (Emicool, Customers).

How to pay your Emicool bill

Emicool lists these ways to pay (Emicool, FAQs; Emicool, Customers):

• Quick Pay, without logging in. Enter your Emicool account ID, follow the instructions and pay (Emicool, Quick Pay).
• The customer portal, after signing in.
• Emicool's offices at Dubai Investment Park, Dubai Motor City and Dubai Uptown Mirdif. Emicool prefers payment there by debit or credit card.
• Bank transfer or cheque deposit to Emicool's accounts at Emirates NBD or Dubai Islamic Bank, listed in its FAQ. Afterwards, submit a Payment Confirmation request in the customer portal so Emicool can match the payment and issue a receipt.

What's on an Emicool bill

Emicool's FAQ explains these charges (Emicool, FAQs):

• Contracted capacity charge. An annual charge at a fixed rate in dirhams per refrigeration ton (TR) of contracted capacity, set in your Emicool contract. It is divided into 12 monthly payments, paid whatever your connection or consumption.
• Contracted capacity. The most cooling capacity made available to your premises, as conveyed by the master developer, approved by the building owner's consultant and authorised by Dubai Municipality.
• Chilled water consumption charge. A rate in dirhams per refrigeration ton hour (RTh), applied to the chilled water your meter records, billed monthly.
• DEWA surcharge. The fuel surcharge DEWA sets each month, passed on for the electricity used to make your chilled water.
• Metering charge. A fixed monthly fee per meter, per invoice, for electronic billing, data and maintenance of the metering equipment.
• Estimated charge. When a meter fails to record consumption, Emicool may use your consumption from the same month last year, for at most two billing cycles, or the previous month's if there is no record from last year.

What each of these charges means, and the limits Dubai's regulator sets on them, is in our guide: District cooling charges in Dubai, explained.

When is an Emicool bill due

Emicool's own pages give slightly different periods:

• Its FAQ says the monthly invoice is generated on the 1st and is due within 15 days of the invoice date, with a late payment fee of AED 100 (Emicool, FAQs).
• Its customer service charter says the due date is 14 days after the invoice date. Emicool may charge the late payment fee if you have not paid within 21 days of the invoice date, and only when more than AED 250 is overdue (Emicool, Customer Service Charter).
• The charter also says Emicool may suspend the connection if you have not paid by the end of the final notice period, 14 days after the due date, and reconnects only once everything owed, including the reconnection fee, is paid.

Emicool's welcome email to new customers covers the billing cycle, invoice details and due dates (Emicool, FAQs).

Emicool's fees

Emicool's customer page lists these charges, each plus VAT (Emicool, Customers):

The customer service charter lists activation at AED 250 (Emicool, Customer Service Charter). In Dubai, the RSB's RD10 regulation caps the activation fee for a unit at AED 200 (RSB Dubai, RD10).

When you register, Emicool also takes a refundable security deposit of eight months of your unit's contracted capacity charge, and a one-time connection charge on the first connection to its network (Emicool, FAQs).

Moving out

To cancel as a tenant, clear your bill up to the last invoice and the processing fees, then submit the required documents at an Emicool office or by email to customercare@emicool.com. Emicool prepares a final bill within 3 working days, takes it from your security deposit, and refunds the rest by bank transfer or cheque (Emicool, Customers).

Get a reminder before your Emicool bill is due

Rasid is an app that keeps household bills and subscriptions in one place. For Emicool it can:

• Track the bill. Add Emicool by hand from Rasid's list of UAE providers, or connect Gmail with read-only access. Rasid then looks for the bills Emicool emails you and reads the amount and, when the email shows it, the due date.
• Remind you before it's due. For a bill with a due date, Rasid sends a reminder three days before, at 10:00.
• Show what changed. Once Rasid has more than one Emicool bill, the bill's screen shows recent bills side by side, the average, and how much more or less this bill is than the last.
• Send you to Emicool to pay. If the payment link in an Emicool email can be confirmed as Emicool's own, the bill shows a Pay button that opens Emicool's page. You can also mark the bill as paid.

Rasid does not pay bills. You pay Emicool directly, through Emicool's own channels. Rasid's Gmail access is read-only, so it cannot send, delete or change your email.