Sembcorp Industries (Sembcorp) and Singapore’s Energy Market Authority (EMA) have officially opened what is being touted as Southeast Asia’s largest energy storage system.
The Sembcorp energy storage system (ESS) spans two hectares of land in the Banyan and Sakra region on Jurong Island, southwest of the main island of Singapore.
Commissioned in only six months, the utility-scale ESS has a maximum storage capacity of 285MWh that can meet the electricity needs of around approximately 24,000 households for one day in a single discharge.
Its rapid response time helps mitigate the intermittency caused by increasing amounts of solar power in Singapore. It can also provide reserves to the power grid, which frees up power generation plants to generate more electricity to meet demand when needed.
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The Sembcorp ESS is an integrated system comprising more than 800 large-scale lithium iron phosphate battery units.
It uses a Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) platform by Envision which offers monitoring and control of the ESS from the site level down to each battery unit and auxiliary equipment.
Live monitoring through the use of intelligent sensors, security cameras and dashboards tracks operational performance.
A decentralised temperature control system by Huawei was deployed to maintain the batteries’ temperature difference within a narrow range. This increases the battery lifespan and ensures a stable power output, according to Sembcorp.
Ngiam Shih Chun, chief executive of the Energy Market Authority, said: “This large-scale ESS marks the achievement of Singapore’s 200MWh energy storage target ahead of time. It will complement our efforts to maximise solar adoption by storing and delivering energy given the intermittent nature of solar power. The ESS will also enhance our power grid stability and resilience by managing mismatches between electricity demand and supply.”
China Energy Engineering Group Shanxi Electric Power Engineering Co., Ltd. (SEPEC) oversaw the engineering, procurement, construction, infrastructure works, installation and commissioning of the Sembcorp ESS.
The Energy Market Authority (EMA), a statutory board under the Singapore Ministry of Trade and Industry, is taking proactive steps to encourage the deployment of energy storage systems across the island. Various statutory papers have been published to provide clarity on the deployment of ESS in Singapore and the current regulatory framework.
The EMA and SP PowerAssets (SPPA) are also collaborating on a regulatory sandbox to test SPPA’s ability to use ESS to smooth out electricity supply during times of high electricity usage in residential areas.
