Paper presented to the 3rd Southern African Solar Energy Conference, South Africa, 11-13 May, 2015.
Malaysia is set to increase its solar energy utilisation as the
first utility-scale solar project in the country is currently in the
works. Accordingly, the national framework for utility-scale
solar is currently being formulated in anticipation of more large
scale solar generators connecting to the Grid.
Meanwhile, in some countries, overly-ambitious renewable
programmes have been modified or scaled-down. Most of these
power systems have discovered that there is a limit on how
much variable energy resources (VERsto) that the Grid can
accommodate before major reinforcements need to be made in
order to maintain grid reliability. Learning from international
experiences, a sustainable and transparent policy is crucial in
order to ensure smooth adoption of renewable energy (RE),
especially more so in a vertically-integrated environment such
as Malaysia.
In this study, the impact of utility-scale solar penetration on
the Peninsular Malaysia total generation system cost in the year
2020 was evaluated. An economic approach was adopted, in
which the generation system differential cost and fuel off-take
as a function of solar penetration level were analysed using
PLEXOS simulation software. A background on the utilityscale
solar landscape in Malaysia is also presented. The results
point to a much higher penetration level than predicted, in the
range of 600 to 2200 MW. It was also discovered that, at higher
penetration levels, coal generation will be significantly affected
by utility-scale solar integration.
