Singapore will soon have its first smart grid which will feature intelligent meters that speak to each other and enable consumers to monitor and optimise their power usage.
Chief executive Lawrence Wong of the Energy Market Authority (EMA) announced last week the launch of a multi-million dollar pilot project to build an “Intelligent Energy System” (IES) for Singapore.
This project signals a new era for Singapore’s energy landscape, and seeks to make the city-state’s power system more reliable and efficient, said Mr Wong.
The IES project will be implemented mainly at the Nanyang Technological University (NTU), but include multiple sites such as neighbouring CleanTech Park at Jalan Bahar, as well as selected residential, commercial and industrial buildings.
It will test a range of smart grid technologies such as advanced electrical meters which will tell energy providers and consumers how much electricity is being used and fed into the grid.
Not excluding the rapidly emerging clean energy sector, the pilot project will also test ways to integrate other sources of power such as solar energy into the main grid.
EMA’s Mr Wong said all these technologies will make the grid smarter and help Singapore reduce its carbon footprint as energy consumption is reduced due to efficiencies.
A previous pilot project at two local housing estates which tested smart meters yielded good results, with households reducing electricity consumption by two per cent. Households also shifted 10 per cent of usual usage from peak to off-peak periods.
“If demand can be shifted away from peak periods, power companies would not need to build extra power plants to cope with such high demand requirements. which will ultimately reduce carbon emissions,” said Mr Wong.
Accenture global managing director of transmission and distribution David Rouls said that Singapore was an ideal city to adopt smart grids, with its stable grid and condensed population.
“The challenge will come from finding the right technologies among many, and integrating them to cater to Singapore’s needs,” he said.
Accenture is among those who are interested in the project and may bid to be involved in it, he added.
The United States, for example, is investing more than US$4 billion for projects to upgrade the country’s electricity grid as part of its economic stimulus package, while Japan has announced ¥6 billion investment for Smart Grid pilot projects on 10 islands, noted Mr Wong.
Singapore will not be a laggard in this, and will “keep on top” of the technologies, he added.
“If we make the right moves, the smart grid presents an enormous growth opportunity. It will provide the platform for new products and services, spur energy innovations, and completely transform the shape of the energy industry in future.”
Here is a more detailed Q&A interview with Lawrence Wong at the launch of the pilot project to the local media:
Can you give us an idea of the costs and timeframe for the completion of this pilot project?
This project is a multi-million dollar pilot. The technology is still evolving rapidly, and we are taking the pragmatic position. We’ll see what’s sensible, start small-scale, and learn by doing, and then take the results that are effective and expand the project along the way.
In terms of timeframe, we’ll are putting out documents for the pre-qualification now and will launch a tender by middle of next year. This will result in an implementation pan that spans two to three years. But it will be an evolving process and if we see benefits we can scale up and do more progressively over time.
How quickly can we see this pilot being implemented across Singapore in the long term?
The cost of this project is not going to be cheap. If you think about it, a smart meter costs 10 times that of a normal meter. So just one smart meter alone is $200, if you have 1.2 million households, that’s a huge amount of money if you do the math.
It’s not going to be cheap today, but in the future the cost of meters will come down, although what that cost in the future is, is difficult to say. It’s difficult to pinpoint a specific timeframe, but we are positioning ourselves so that we are able to make use of technologies and stay on top of trends.
How does Singapore compare with other countries in terms of adopting smart grid systems?
Our pilot is not very different from pilots being done elsewhere. In all smart grids, you have critical components, such as smart grids, communication infrastructure such as GPS, hi-fibre cables, data management systems to gather the data. You’ll need various demand-side application solutions, for example, allowing consumers to respond to price fluctuations, using an automated solution.
But no one has done it on a country-wide basis yet. There are various projects that are evolving. We are not setting targets for ourselves in a dogmatic manner.
Will this spell a reduction in carbon emissions for Singapore?
This will depend on the energy you save. If we are able to reduce consumption, and and consumers use their energy more efficiently, there’ll be savings and reductions in carbon emissions. If you’re able to shift the peak load, (where energy demand peaks), it will mean evening out the load, and deferment of new investments in new power plants. If you are able to push that back, you save in capital costs, and carbon emissions.
Do you envision any obstacles in the implementation of this project?
This project is much more than the implementation itself. It’s a complex undertaking, because you’re talking about various things. It’s not so simple as just putting the meter there. You have to get the data, learn how to manage it, then solve how to show consumers a price that varies, and have consumers participate in that. So there’s also a need for users to be part of this exercise. It will need good coordination with the project team, and also with consumers.
How would you compare this pilot to the previous pilot on Electricity Vending Systems?
The EVS was a small-scale, “proof of concept”. I think overall it’s a success and it has shown that consumers want to participate in having time differentiated pricing. We gave them a choice in the EVS pilot: standard flat rate tariff or time differentiated. And almost all of them chose the latter, with the peak and off-peak pricing. And we saw a shift in consumption from peak to off-peak hours. We had 400 households participating, now, it’s a larger scale, we are looking at several thousand smart meters, and we’re testing out applications in a more intensive manner.
What’s the next step?
We will look at the cost and benefits, and amount of investments required. If there is good economic case, then we will like to have Singapore Power scale up some of these applications and smart meters in a larger way over the whole of Singapore. This also paves a way for us to open up our retail market for competition, which is something that we are looking at too.
