Chiller-Free vs Chiller-Paid in Dubai: The AED 375 a Month a Cooling Bill Charges Before the AC Is Switched On

Two listings for the same tower, same layout, one floor apart. One says chiller-free at AED 98,000. The other says AED 90,000, chiller paid by tenant. The AED 8,000 gap looks like the price of cooling. It is not. It is the landlord’s guess at the price of cooling, and the actual number is on a tariff sheet anyone can read.

What “chiller-free” and “chiller-paid” actually mean on the lease

Gulf News’s renting guide (Zainab Husain, updated 6 October 2025) puts the split plainly. In a chiller-free building “the landlord or building management covers air conditioning costs, so you won’t see cooling charges on your DEWA bill”. In a district-cooled tower “you will pay a separate bill and refundable deposit to the cooling provider (such as Empower, Emicool, or Tabreed)”.

So chiller-free is not free cooling. It is cooling priced into the rent, at a number the landlord chose. Chiller-paid is cooling priced by the provider, at a number the Dubai Supreme Council of Energy approved. The comparison is between those two numbers, and only one of them is guesswork.

The two lines on a district-cooling bill, and which one never moves

Dubai’s Regulation & Supervision Bureau publishes the rulebook for this, RD10, and its Issue 1.4 dated 6 February 2026 defines both lines. The consumption tariff is “the unit charge in Dirhams for each refrigeration-ton-hour of cooling energy consumed by the Customer”. The capacity tariff is “the unit charge normally quoted in dirhams per year for each refrigeration-ton of cooling capacity made available to the Customer”. Made available, not used.

Empower’s published rates, as reported by Gulf News in July 2024 and still listed on Bayut’s guide updated 27 August 2026, are AED 0.568 per refrigeration ton per hour for consumption and “Dh750 per Refrigeration Ton (RT) per annum” for demand, billed monthly in advance. RD10 caps the consumption tariff at AED 0.643 per ton-hour “inclusive of Fuel Surcharge” and says “tariff arrangements that include indexation or escalation of Capacity Charges will not be approved”. The bill also carries a billing-services line, which RD10 caps at AED 30 a month and which Gulf News reports as “Dh50 quarterly or Dh30 monthly” at Empower.

The capacity figure depends on one number the listing never prints: the unit’s allocated refrigeration tons. RD10 says a unit’s contracted capacity “is the share of the Building’s Contracted Capacity that has been allocated to the Unit”, and it prohibits providers from “assigning Contracted Capacity to Units based on installed equipment capacity rather than appropriate allocation”. That allocation is on the provider’s registration page for the unit, and the outgoing tenant’s last bill shows it. Ask for either before signing.

The capacity charge is rent for cold water that has not been used yet. It is due in January with the windows open.

Worked example: a 6 RT two-bed, month by month

Gulf News uses a 6 RT unit as its example, so I will too. Capacity is 6 × AED 750 = AED 4,500 a year, or AED 375 a month on average. Gulf News calculates January at “approximately Dh387.50” because the monthly bill is pro-rated on days. Add the AED 30 billing fee and the fixed part of the bill is AED 405 a month before any cooling is drawn.

The consumption line needs an assumption, so here is mine, stated so it can be swapped. Say the unit averages 2 RT of load around the clock in August and 0.5 RT in January. August is 2 × 24 × 31 = 1,488 ton-hours, at AED 0.568 that is AED 845.18. January is 372 ton-hours, AED 211.30.

Over a year at those assumptions, 8,000 ton-hours of consumption costs AED 4,544. Add the AED 4,500 capacity and AED 360 of billing fees, then 5% VAT, and the year is AED 9,874.20. Of that, AED 5,103 is fixed. The fixed part is 52% of the year’s cooling bill, and it is the part that would still arrive if the flat sat empty from June to September.

Now the listing gap. If the chiller-free flat is AED 8,000 a year dearer, it is AED 1,874 cheaper than paying the bill on these assumptions. If the gap were AED 12,000, the chiller-paid flat wins by AED 2,126. The break-even is the annual bill, and the only unknown in it is consumption, because the capacity line is arithmetic the moment the RT allocation is known. Run it with the actual allocation and a summer bill from the outgoing tenant, not with my 2 RT guess.

The cash-out at move-in, and the bill at move-out

The bill is not the only cost. Gulf News lists Empower’s security deposit at “Dh2,000 for a flat and Dh3,000 for a villa”, refundable. RD10 caps a deposit at “8 months of Capacity Charges unless otherwise approved”, which on the 6 RT unit is AED 3,000, so the AED 2,000 sits under the cap. Bayut’s guide lists a connection charge of AED 2,000 and an administration fee of AED 1,000, both one-time; RD10 defines the connection charge as “a one-time charge that may be applied on first connection”, so a unit that has been cooled before is normally past that. On the way out, Gulf News reports a disconnection fee of Dh1,000.

At the trading company where I work, the logistics team signs the same shape of contract with a warehouse operator: a fixed monthly fee for reserved pallet positions whether stock arrives or not, and a handling charge per movement. Nobody there budgets the reserved positions as a variable cost, because they are not one. A cooling bill is the same. In my own tracker the capacity line is a fixed monthly bill, dated the 1st, and only the consumption line is a utility that floats with the season. That is the split that makes a summer bill look like weather rather than a surprise.

The listing gap is a guess. The capacity charge is a number. Compare the guess to the number.