Lobby for smart grid roadmap in Malaysia

• Country needs demo projects large enough to engage stakeholders 
• Government recognition sought for smart grid deployment in sustainability agenda

With its national power utility company having embarked on a small demonstration project on smart grid, Malaysia is now being lobbied to develop a roadmap and institutional framework to ensure coordinated efforts for the long-term. A recent national workshop on smart grid held in Kuala Lumpur recently has yielded a report that was sent to the Ministry of Energy, Green Technology and Water, and it is learnt, this will be followed up on by industry representatives. 

Although smart grid technology has been embraced in many countries, in tandem with developments in renewable energy and energy-efficiency initiatives, industry circles lament that the Malaysian government has yet to come up with a policy covering this green technology to guide and support its growth in the years to come.     

Tenaga Nasional Berhad (TNB), Malaysia’s state-owned utility, is in the midst of implementing a demonstration project that will involve 5,000 consumers at three locations. This is among initiatives being taken as the country heads towards total withdrawal of subsidy for electricity generation in four years.

Halim Osman, secretary for the Malaysian chapter of CIRED (a French acronym for an international organisation dedicated to the advance of knowledge in electricity distribution), says Malaysia should adopt smart grid as part of its sustainable development agenda.  

Halim was the chair of the technical committee for the national workshop, which saw presentations that covered policy areas, envisioning and road-mapping, smart grid deployment experiences, enabling capabilities and technologies and R&D efforts in Malaysia. [The workshop ended with a panel discussion on the possible issues and solutions for Malaysia to move forward in smart grid deployment. See box story below.] 

Each country is differently motivated when promoting the smart grid. Countries like China and India need to keep pace with their high economic growth and rapid urbanisation, while for the United Kingdom, Germany and Australia, the emphasis is more on pursuing a low-carbon agenda. In Korea, Japan, Singapore and the US, it is a part of an overall plan to integrate with other initiatives such as intelligent cities and electric vehicles. 

Studies by US-based Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) show that a slight dip from 1% to less than 0.7% in annual growth of electricity consumption may mean savings of US$2 trillion for the US, over the 2010-2030 period, compared to the smart grid set-up costs of some US$476 billion. “Without smart grid (in the US), the average electricity bill will probably rise by 400% over the next 20 years; with smart grid, the increase will only be around 50%,” Halim says. 

He says Malaysia has yet to adopt smart grid as part of its national sustainable development agenda despite having ambitious goals of reducing its carbon emission by 40% from 2005 level, and jacking up its renewable energy mix to 2,080 MW by 2020 and 4,000 MW by 2030.

“Transmission and distribution (T&D) network operators or utilities are doing their part in migrating to smarter grid but investments are driven mainly by other drivers, like capacity building, security and reliability and operational efficiency,” he says. “Limited funding and lack of incentives for investment in smart grid will result in limited pilot projects on a smallish scale, which have less impact on sustainability goals.” 

Malaysia’s progress

TNB chief engineer (system planning & development) Charanjit Singh Gill says TNB is testing the smart grid in Penang, Kuala Lumpur and Johor Baru and has ordered 1,000 meters for a start. In June, it completed Phase 1 of its smart grid development, that is improving the operational efficiency of the designated distribution system.

“We are now at Phase 2 (until 2013); our emphasis is on improving network and energy efficiency as well as enabling and encouraging customer participation (in controlling energy usage),” he says. 

Concurrently, Phase 3 (2011-2015) will focus on reducing CO² emission and enable the integration of renewable energy (RE) onto the grid and the introduction of electric vehicles. TNB will look into issues that may arise related to the feed-in of RE (mainly solar photovoltaic) into the distribution system, the feasibility of distributed energy storage and developing a business model to support electric vehicle charging.

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