Saturday, January 7, 2012

Buying power from Malaysia

I wrote in my previous post that while we are selling surplus power to Malaysia at the moment, PM Loong and Najib is discussing a deal that we buy power from Malaysia.

Malaysia's power surplus
Malaysia is extremely well endowed in hydro power. Unfortunately, they are all located in Borneo, inaccessible to consumers of the peninsular. Since the completion for Bakun Dam in Sarawak, it has an additional capacity of 2.4GW. Currently Sarawak generates around 0.9GW and it does not need any.

There are plans to build 12 more hydro in Sarawak, that will bring additional capacity to 8-9 GW including Bakun Dam.

This would not be viable unless someone finance a HVDC transmission line to peninsular. The line to bring Bakun power would cost around SGD4 billion, and to bring the entire 9GW would certainly cost more.

At SG peak consumption of 6.5 GW, Sarawak alone would be more than enough to supply us. According to a source, the entire hydro potential of Borneo is 50 GW, and Malaysia Borneo alone has around 25 GW. The average consumption of Malaysia and Singapore is around 15GW. Hence, Malaysian Borneo hydro will be able to supply the whole of Malaysia and Singapore.

Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand consume about 30 GW of electricity, and a grid from Malaysian Borneo, plus constructions of series of dam in Malaysia and Thailand could in theory do away with all thermal power station.

When such infra-structures are in place, it would open up the other 25 GW of hydro potential in Indonesian Borneo.