Friday 29 Mar 2024
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This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily on September 19, 2018

KUALA LUMPUR: Power giant Tenaga Nasional Bhd (TNB) welcomes more competition in the electric supply industry with reforms proposed under the Malaysia Energy Supply Industry 2.0 (Mesi 2.0) programme.

TNB president and chief executive officer Datuk Seri Azman Mohd said the utility company will give full cooperation to the Malaysia Programme Office for Power Electricity Reform (MyPower), the agency tasked by the energy, science, technology, environment and climate change ministry to drive Mesi 2.0.

“We will work with MyPower, and being a [seasoned player] in the power industry, [TNB] has much to contribute in ideas and experiences,” said Azman.

“I think Malaysia is one of the most progressive countries when it comes to reforms. [For example,] the Mesi 1.0 [had] actually liberalised the [power] generation sector. [Previously,] TNB was the only [power] generator [but] in 1995, independent power producers (IPPs) were introduced.

“Now we have several IPPs competing in the generation sector and we welcome that, because we want to contribute more in powering the nation,” he told reporters at the sidelines of the Conference of the Electric Power Supply Industry 2018 (Cepsi 2018) yesterday.

Azman also corrected a misperception of TNB — that the utility has become lazy due to its monopoly status.

“Being a monopoly, people have a misperception that we (TNB) are lazy and incurring more costs. We like competition [and we are ready for it]. For example, looking at the statistics such as the supply average interruption duration index [Saidi], we are at developed country status. When it comes to system minutes for transmission lines, we are below one minute, even better than some developed countries,” he said.

Saidi measures the average duration of interruption in power supply indicated in minutes per customer. TNB’s Saidi came in at 50.24 minutes/customer/year, in line with the developed country benchmark of 50 minutes.

Meanwhile, TNB has successfully kept its transmission system minutes reflecting the performance of grid operations consistently below the developed countries benchmark of two minutes since 2009.

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