Will Town Hall Link Homes Use District Cooling? What the Tender Requires and What It Leaves to the Developer

Jurong Lake District is building a district cooling network, and the plant for it will sit inside the Town Hall Link development. Buyers often take that to mean every home here will run on district cooling. URA's tender documents say something narrower. The development has to use district cooling for its offices, shops and serviced apartments. The private homes are left out of that requirement. This guide sets out what the tender requires, what it leaves to the winning developer, and what to ask once floor plans are out.

Where things stand: the tender closes at 12 noon on 17 November 2026. The developer, project name, unit count, price and completion date have not been announced yet.

What the tender requires

URA's Technical Conditions of Tender state that all new developments in the area will be served by a District Cooling System. Instead of each building running its own chiller plant, chilled water for air-conditioning comes from a central plant through underground pipes. URA has appointed Keppel DHCS to design, build, own and operate the plant, and to supply chilled water 24 hours a day.

The wording for this site matters. The winning tenderer must take chilled water from the district plant for the air-conditioning of the development excluding flats. The tender lists serviced apartments with the non-residential uses, so if the scheme includes them, they are on district cooling. For the flats, the tender gives a separate residential tariff and a residential scope of works, but it does not make the connection compulsory.

Part of the development	District cooling under the tender
Office (at least 40,000 m² of GFA)	Required
Retail (20,000 to 44,000 m² of GFA)	Required
Serviced apartments (up to 24,000 m² of GFA, optional)	Required if built; charged at the non-residential tariff
Flats (up to 102,000 m² of GFA; URA estimates 1,200 units)	Not required; the developer decides

So the answer to "will my unit be on district cooling?" depends on the developer's design, which has not been announced yet.

If the homes are connected

The tender already sets out how a residential connection would work.

• Metering per unit. The residential scope of works provides BTU meters and remotely controlled valves for each dwelling unit. Keppel DHCS specifies and owns them, and the developer pays for them.
• What the owner looks after. The fan coil units and chilled-water pipes inside each home are owned and maintained by the resident. The heat exchanger room and the pumps, pipes and risers serving the whole development belong to the developer and then the MCST. The heat exchanger equipment itself stays with Keppel DHCS.
• Base residential tariff. The tender lists an installation charge of S$1,500 per refrigeration ton (RT) and an energy charge of S$0.35 per refrigeration-ton-hour (RTh) for residential use. No monthly demand charge is listed for homes. Offices, shops and serviced apartments pay S$3,000 per RT to install, S$4.70 per RT per month in demand charges and S$0.1865 per RTh.
• Rates move over time. The installation charge is indexed to the Consumer Price Index. The residential energy charge is adjusted each quarter, weighted 75% to SP's high-tension electricity tariff and 25% to PUB's NEWater charges, counted from the date the supply agreement is signed.

These are base rates offered to the developer, not a household bill. The supply terms are agreed between the developer and Keppel DHCS. URA says a specimen Chilled Water Supply Agreement is given to the successful tenderer only after the award. How any installation charge is passed on to buyers, and what a typical home would pay each month, has not been announced yet.

The plant sits inside the development

This matters whether or not the homes connect. The tender requires the developer to build space for the district cooling plant within the project, at no cost to Keppel DHCS. The plant will serve other developments in Jurong Lake District as well as this site. The indicative space requirements in the tender are:

• about 2,450 m² in the basement for the chilled-water plant room and thermal energy storage tanks;
• about 1,062 m² at level 1 for electrical rooms;
• about 3,417 m² on the roof for cooling towers.

Which roof holds the cooling towers is not fixed yet. The tender asks the developer to design for noise from the plant and for discharge from the cooling towers, including the effect on its own buildings. Keppel DHCS must have access to these spaces at all times, and they cannot be changed without the Government's consent.

The site will also house the central station for the district's pneumatic waste conveyance system, which moves refuse through pipes instead of by truck. URA notes that NEA will appoint a separate operator and update the requirements for this site over time.

Other building standards the tender sets

The same documents say every new development in Jurong Lake District, including homes, must reach at least BCA Green Mark Platinum Super Low Energy. New Government Land Sales developments in the district, including this site, must also earn the Maintainability, Whole Life Carbon and Intelligence badges under Green Mark 2021. These set a minimum standard for the building as a whole. They do not tell you how a particular unit's air-conditioning will be supplied.

Questions to ask once a developer is named

1. Are the flats connected to district cooling, or do they use their own air-conditioning? Does this differ between flats and any serviced apartments?
2. If the flats are connected, how is the installation charge handled, and is it included in the price?
3. How is chilled water billed: per-unit meter readings direct from the operator, or through the MCST?
4. Where are the cooling towers, the plant room entrances and the waste central station, and which stacks face them?
5. Which parts of the air-conditioning system are in each owner's maintenance scope?

The answers should show up in the site plan, the floor plans and the sales documents. The price page will show figures only once the developer releases them. To get the developer's details on cooling and layouts when they are published, register on the showflat page. The full land-use limits are in our tender particulars guide.