Economic impact of distributed generation in Singapore

• Main Author: Mohamed Benferooz Faiz Mohamed.
• Other Authors: Gooi Hoay Beng
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2010
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/40500
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Singapore is set to ride on the global call for “green” energy solutions. This is evident with Singapore’s rapid pace of development, which has inevitably led to the escalation of electricity demand. Distributed generation running on renewable resources or low emission fuels are being leveraged by power generators and industrial users. Distributed generation could be viewed as one that operates solely on renewable resources such as solar radiation and wind speed as well as operating on low emission sources such as natural gas. Like every energy market in the world, Singapore has policies and regulations in place for such technologies. These are in place to ensure safety and reliability and to deter market monopoly by the systems adopters. Therefore, this report addresses the current development of distributed generation in Singapore and factors that prevent a wider scale adoption. In addition, the electricity market is being liberalized commercially to encourage retail competition. Consequently, this will bring electricity price down. For the end user to feel the impact of tariffs variation as a result of competition, Electricity Vending System, a simple gadget displaying tariff prices, will be introduced in Singapore for household users. Such an implementation would prompt users on using electricity pragmatically. In assessing the economic impact of distributed generation in Singapore, economic evaluation software was employed to determine the feasibility of its application. The economic evaluation showed that using renewable sources such as solar and wind for electricity in Singapore remain a fabled technology due to its high capital cost and those running on the natural gas was noted to imply financial prudency.