Singapore plans to import up to 4 gigawatts (GW) of electricity from renewable energy sources by 2035. This will constitute around 30% of Singapore’s electricity supply, says Minister for Trade and Industry Gan Kim Yong.
Singapore will issue two requests for proposals for such imports. The first, to import up to 1.2GW of electricity, will be launched in November, while the second will be issued in 2Q2022, says the Energy Market Authority (EMA).
The republic will start with trials to iron out technical and regulatory issues associated with cross-border power trading, says Gan in the inaugural Singapore Energy Lecture at the 14th Singapore International Energy Week (SIEW) on Oct 25.
These include a trial to import 100 megawatts (MW) of electricity from Peninsular Malaysia and a pilot to import 100MW of solar-generated electricity from Pulau Bulan, Indonesia. The former was first announced at the same SIEW 2020 by then-Minister for Trade and Industry Chan Chun Sing.
EMA has appointed YTL PowerSeraya (YTLPS) for a two-year trial to import 100MW of electricity from Peninsular Malaysia, following a request for proposals in March.
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“YTLPS was selected as its proposal was best able to meet EMA’s requirements to trial electricity imports via the existing interconnector,” says EMA in a press release. This is expected to commence in early 2022.
The 100MW of electricity imported will make up about 1.5% of Singapore’s peak electricity demand.
“These trials allow us to learn and improve our system and processes as we increase our imports. We will also import different types of low-carbon energy from different parts of the world to diversify our sources and enhance energy security. This is similar to our current approach of diversifying natural gas sources,” says Gan.
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In Indonesia, EMA is working on a pilot with a consortium led by power generation company PacificLight Power to import 100MW of electricity from a solar farm in Pulau Bulan.
Electricity will be supplied via a new interconnector that directly connects a solar farm in Pulau Bulan to PLP’s power station in Singapore. The pilot will be commissioned by around 2024.
Singapore is also working on the Lao PDR-Thailand-Malaysia-Singapore Power Integration Project (LTMS-PIP) to import up to 100MW of power from Lao PDR to Singapore via Thailand and Malaysia using existing interconnections from 2022 to 2023.
But cleaner energy comes at a price. “The transition to renewable energy, including imported electricity, may not mean cheaper electricity,” says Gan. “While the cost of generation may be lower, the costs of transmission and backup, as well as necessary grid enhancements will add to overall costs. This is an inevitable but necessary trade-off in the energy transition.”
Importing low-carbon energy will be a “key needle mover” in Singapore’s energy transition, says Gan. “Today, most of our energy depends on supplies which are imported anyway. Instead of importing all of it in molecules, we will import some of it as electrons,” he adds, referring to Singapore’s transition away from natural gas.
“Even though Singapore is resource constrained, we lie in a region with abundant renewable energy resources. EMA has been studying the option of electricity imports for several years. A significant portion of our electricity can be imported safely and reliably if we have adequate safeguards in place,” he adds.
Gan notes that the authorities will provide sufficient backups. “Besides energy storage systems for short-term disruptions, we will also deploy some of the retiring combined-cycle gas turbines as backups in the event of a longer-term disruption.”
While Gan commends Singapore’s “creative” ways to harvest solar energy, like the floating solar farm at Tengeh Reservoir opened earlier this year, these efforts alone are not sufficient.
“Even if we maximise all available space in Singapore for solar deployment, and accounting for efficiency improvements, we would still not be able to generate enough power to keep the lights on with solar energy alone,” he says.
The energy transition is an important part of our global climate change efforts, says Gan. “Each country’s decarbonisation pathway will differ and will be heavily dependent on their domestic circumstances, in particular their access to renewable energy resources.”
The Singapore International Energy Week 2021 will run from Oct 25 to 29.
Photo: Bloomberg
