Friday 29 Mar 2024
By
main news image

This article first appeared in The Edge Malaysia Weekly on October 8, 2018 - October 14, 2018

THE power generation industry has been one of the slower segments in terms of innovation in almost every country in the world — compared with other industries that have evolved over the years, such as the telecommunications industry, where the business model has shifted to a more consumer-centric approach.

The Malaysian utilities industry has also taken gradual steps to evolve, according to Accenture managing director, infrastructure services, Adrian Lim.

During a recent interview with The Edge at the Conference of Power and Electricity Supply Industry 2018 (Cepsi 2018), Lim highlighted several key trends that were transforming the utilities sector, which included a ramp up in energy generation using renewable sources and the advent of distributed energy resources (DERs).

Lim notes that Malaysia has made some progress in terms of increasing the usage of renewable energy, pointing to Malaysia’s target to have at least 20% of its power generation from renewable sources by 2030, as opposed to the current 2%.

However, in terms of the integration of DERs into the grid, which basically means the integration of different energy sources like solar panels and backup generators of large buildings to the grid, Lim says it is still early days for the country.

“The integration of DERs into the grid comes with many benefits including lowering the cost of consumption for consumers, as they can offset their electric bill with the electricity that they are generating, for example, from the solar panels installed at their homes,” says Lim.

“This will also be advantageous for utility companies in dealing with hot spots, as the decentralisation of power generation relieves some of the load borne by the power plants, especially in areas where the grid is operating near its capacity.

“From the DER perspective, there is a feed-in tariff mechanism already today in Malaysia but it is not on a large scale.”

Certain infrastructure needs to be in place to facilitate the integration of DERs, including the use of smart grids and smart meters. Malaysia has started to make some progress in this space, with TNB’s installation of 310,000 smart meters in Malacca.

The liberalisation of the utilities sector is also an important factor in advancing the local industry, Lim says, pointing to Thailand as an example — a deregulated market with multiple energy provider companies such as the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (EGAT) and the Provincial Electricity Authority (PEA).

“Besides the ramp up in the usage of renewables and DER, other drivers of change in the utilities sector includes the electrification of transportation, innovation in energy efficiency and “instant intelligence”, whereby energy companies leverage on data analytics, cloud and artificial intelligence to be able to assess the grid in real-time to make instant decisions.,” Lim says.


The Edge is the media partner for CEPSI 2018

Save by subscribing to us for your print and/or digital copy.

P/S: The Edge is also available on Apple's AppStore and Androids' Google Play.

      Print
      Text Size
      Share