Sunny future

Saturday April 11, 2009
Sunny future
By CECILIA KOK


We live in a power-hungry world, where natural resources are continually being gobbled up to feed its insatiable appetite for energy. This has contributed to the rapid depletion of natural resources, most of which are not renewable, such as oil and natural gas as well as coal.

Should we continue to depend wholly on these non-renewable resources for energy, the world will one day face an energy crisis as these finite resources cannot be replaced once depleted. Along with the issues of climate change and global warming increasingly becoming a threat to mankind, the race to develop clean and safe forms of energy has now shifted into higher gear.

So, renewable natural resources such as wind, water, biomass, geothermal heat and sunlight are increasingly being tapped to produce sustainable and clean energy. Even in countries where sunlight is not an abundant resource, solar power has become an important energy source that is mainly harvested through photovoltaic (PV) system, a technology that converts sunlight directly into electricity.

According to the European Photovoltaic Industry Association, Europe currently accounts for more than 9GW, or 65% of the global cumulative PV installed capacity. Japan (2.1GW) and the US (1.2GW) follow with 15% and 8% of the global cumulative PV power installed, respectively.


Suchitra Sriram
According to national project leader at Pusat Tenaga Malaysia (PTM), Ahmad Hadri Haris, the PV industry in Malaysia is also growing steadily. Ahmad has been heading the five-year RM100mil Malaysia Building Integrated Photovoltaic (MBIPV) project, which is partially funded by the United Nations Development Programme, since July 2005.

He reveals that MBIPV has recently closed its fifth call for the Suria 1000 programme, which involved an allocation of 140kW of PV capacity for public bidding. But the submissions that MBIPV received was three times more than the targeted PV capacity, signifying the growing popularity of solar energy in Malaysia.

The Suria 1000 programme has been offering the public opportunities to generate their own solar power for their homes through competitive bidding at subsidised prices since 2006. To date, more than 100 buildings have benefited from the programme.

Blessing of the sun

Located within the equatorial region, with an average daily sunlight of 4.5 to eight hours, Malaysia is an ideal spot for large-scale solar power installation.

To put this into perspective, Ahmad says, if we have enough solar PV panels to cover 0.6% or 786 km sq of land in Peninsular Malaysia, we can generate the total amount of electricity supplied by Tenaga Nasional Bhd in 2007 of 86.5 TWh (terrawatt/hour). A strong advocate for solar energy, Ahmad says the potential economic values generated by solar PV are huge.

Frost & Sullivan’s industry analyst for energy and power systems, Suchitra Sriram, concurs, saying that the development of the solar energy market can attract new players in the value chain such as installers, system integrators and equipment suppliers, and creates significant job opportunities for skilled and semi-skilled labour in the country.

To date, Malaysia has attracted five foreign direct investments, worth up to RM13.8bil, to set up solar PV manufacturing facilities in Malaysia. These include US companies First Solar Inc at the Kulim Hi Tech Park in Kedah and SunPower Corp in Melaka; China-based ReneSola in Johor Baru; German company Q-Cells in Selangor Science Park 2; and Japanese firm Tokuyama Corp in Sarawak. Collectively, these companies are expected to provide 11,500 jobs by 2010.

Although there are uncertainties surrounding the 2009 solar PV market due to the current economic crisis, experts believe the development of the solar energy market ultimately depends on government policies.

Ahmad believes that renewable energy businesses would remain resilient as the needs for renewable energy are driven by long-term environmental and energy security concerns, while Suchitra believes that the Government’s support in the form of incentives and subsidies could significantly bolster the solar energy sector in Malaysia.

Currently, the biggest barrier to growing the solar energy sector in Malaysia is the high installation cost of PV systems. With the availability of subsidised electricity tariff rate, there is less incentive for people to switch to solar energy.

“The Government has been subsidising fossil fuel for more than 50 years... to grow the PV and other forms of renewable energies, a long-term commitment from the Government is required so that grid-parity can be achieved,” he says. (Grid-parity is defined as the point at which PV electricity is equal to or cheaper than grid power.)

According to Ahmad, a Renewable Energy Act is expected to be implemented under the 10th Malaysian Plan, which begins in 2011. The Act is expected to include an incentive structure called feed-in tariff, whereby owners of PV systems who are connected to the grid are allowed to receive monthly revenue from the utility companies at above-market rates set by the Government over a period of time. This should further encourage the adoption of sustainable energy in the country.

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