As part of its ‘green’ ambitions, Singapore’s largest generating company Senoko Energy is now exploring offering solar energy options to HDB households as well as industrial customers here.
‘We are looking at a small initiative into renewables, specifically offering solar energy in the Singapore market,’ Senoko’s chief executive Brendan Wauters told BT yesterday.
This is still at an early stage, and will likely be in collaboration with a solar equipment maker, he disclosed, adding that the genco is targeting both the industrial and HDB markets.
It follows the HDB’s move to harness solar energy on a large scale, with its $31 million, five-year scheme to test-bed solar panels in 30 precincts. The Housing Board has started calling tenders as part of this plan.
Currently, Senoko is ‘repowering’ three older oil- fired plants with a total 750-megawatt capacity into two more-efficient and ‘greener’, or environment-friendly, combined cycle gas-turbines which will offer a total 860 MW when fully operational by the second half of next year.
The genco sees its latest venture into solar energy as an interim project, ahead of a further repowering of its remaining two oil-fired units of 250 MW each also to gas-firing, Mr Wauters said.
Senoko is at the moment holding off on this repowering expansion in view of the significant new generating capacity being added by other industry players here, he said, adding that it was also closely monitoring electricity demand growth here.
He was responding to BT queries regarding first-half financials reported on Aug 9 by French utility giant GDF Suez, which has a 30 per cent stake in the French-Japanese Lion Power consortium which owns Senoko Energy.
GDF Suez reported that ‘in Singapore, Senoko reported a 10-million-euro (S$17 million) rise in Ebitda in first half 2011, buoyed by margin growth on sales agreements with industrial customers and market opportunities over the last two months of the period’.
This was ‘despite a 0.3 terawatt hour drop in volumes sold in Singapore’, it added.
Separately, International Power – which was acquired by GDF Suez earlier this year – also reported in its H1 financials that ‘in Singapore, Senoko delivered a strong performance compared to 2010, due to improved retail pricing and favourable spot market prices in Q2′.
Senoko’s Mr Wauters told BT: ‘We are happy with our performance in the first half. It was a sound performance given that we were operating in a difficult environment’.
On the market outlook in Q3, Mr Wauters said that ‘Singapore electricity demand picked up in June, with this continuing through to July, even though the economy seems to be slowing’.
‘While electricity demand has been robust so far this quarter, the market turmoil of the last couple of weeks raises a lot of questions, and it’s too early to predict its impact on electricity demand here,’ he added.
