Role of Solar in Singapore Future Energy-Mix and Practical Solutions for an Island Country

Singapore plans to meet  28% of its peak power demand from solar power by 2030. The country also wants to extend its target and achieve to supply 43% of its power demand from solar power at the end of mid-century.

For this, they have decided to carry out this ambitious plan in line with many countries that have plans for reducing their carbon emissions. But Singapore faces a great challenge, “the space constraint”. Singapore is an island country and does not have enough land to deploy ground-mounted solar power plants. 

According to Channel News Asia, as per today most of the solar PV panels in Singapore are on rooftops and are largely out-of-sight. Singapore has a lot of skyscrapers and tall buildings which are only energy consumers. Therefore, one of the possible solutions to address the space constraint challenge is harnessing vertical spaces for solar PV installations, such as facades of skyscrapers. 

In other words, this will need architects to better incorporate solar PV into a building’s design and will serve as an important enabler of zero-energy buildings, super-low-energy buildings, and positive-energy buildings. It is also known as building-integrated photovoltaic (BIPV).

Another option for the country is floating photovoltaic (FPV) as the new emerging market in the solar energy sector. FPV is mounting solar PV in the floating structure on the body of water. As an example,  a large 60 MW floating solar PV system will also be completed at Tengeh Reservoir. It is worth mentioning that the country has set a plan to install 350 MW in 2020 and in line with its ambitious plan aims to install 2000 MW by 2030. 

From another perspective, there is a fast-track project plan ongoing, to provide 10 GW of Australian sun power with underwater HVDC cables to Singapore. This will be world’s longest underwater HVDC cable and would connect Darwin to Singapore with 3750 km cables. For more information read our article on this project. 

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Source:@ChannelNewsAsia & @Solar_Edition

Photo: @Solar_Edition

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