Speaking at the Singapore International Energy Week (SIEW) 2019 on 29 October, Singapore’s Minister for Trade & Industry Chan Chun Sing announced that the city state is setting a new target of deploying at least 2 Gigawatt peak (GWp) of solar energy by 2030. He also said that Singapore is on track to achieve its solar target of 350 megawatt-peak (MWp) by 2020. The 2030 target represents about 10% of Singapore’s peak daily electricity demand today and will be an increase in solar adoption in Singapore by about 8 times from today’s installed capacity. The government is also setting an energy storage deployment target of 200 MW beyond 2025.
The Minister described the new goal as a “stretch target” and said,” Much of its success will depend on how the public sector and private industries can work together to bring this about. Much of this will also depend on the technology breakthrough that we can see in the next 10 years, whether we can increase the efficiency of existing solar panels beyond the conventional 15 to 20 per cent, and whether we can use vertical surfaces over and beyond the horizontal surfaces that we have today.”
The government will continue to support the adoption of more solar solutions through streamlining regulations, the SolarNova program, and the deployment of solar panels on rooftops. The SolarNova Program jointly led by the Housing & Development Board (HDB) and the Economic Development Board (EDB), aggregates solar demand across government agencies to leverage economies of scale so that agencies with smaller energy demands are able to enjoy clean energy at a lower cost. HDB, the government agency in charge of public housing, aims to deploy solar panels on 1 in 2 HDB rooftops over the upcoming years.
In addition to rooftops, Singapore will continue to explore the deployment of panels on water reservoir, in the sea and on the vertical surfaces of buildings, as Singapore has limited availability of land. Singapore’s national water agency PUB intends to deploy a 50 MWp floating solar photovoltaic system on Tengeh Reservoir by 2021. When installed, it will be Singapore’s first single large-scale floating solar PV system. PUB is also in the process of implementing two other smaller 1.5MWp floating solar PV systems on Bedok and Lower Seletar reservoirs.
To achieve the deployment target of Energy Storage Systems (ESS), the Energy Market Authority (EMA) will work closely with the industry and agencies to build test-beds and standards to support the deployment of ESS in Singapore. Among the collaborations will be a research grant awarded under EMA’s partnership with the Korea Institute of Energy Technology Evaluation and Planning (KETEP). This will help promising Singaporean and Korean firms to co-develop innovative solutions towards the management and safety of ESS. The project aims to develop a novel hybrid ESS by coupling lithium iron phosphate (LFP) and lithium iron manganese phosphate (LMFP) batteries with lithium-ion capacitors to store and dispatch more energy within the same amount of space required for deployment. The project will also develop a Smart Distributed ESS Management System (SDEMS) designed for Singapore’s hot and humid climate, as such conditions can degrade battery performance. The SDEMS will come with an artificial intelligence correction model to optimize ESS charging for better battery stability and fire safety. If successful, the project will produce a new ESS that is safer and more suited for hot and humid conditions. The SDEMS can also be customized by the industry to work with different types of lithium-ion batteries used for their ESS.
(Sources: Energy Market Authority, Singapore; Ministry of Trade and Industry, Singapore; PUB Singapore; Straits Times)
