Singapore’s first-ever district-level smart grid, expected to be completed in mid-2026, will be the largest of its kind to enhance energy efficiency by drawing from renewable energy sources. In the future, it could store energy generated from on-site solar panels and discharge excess energy to the national grid during peak demand periods.
Located at Punggol Digital District (PDD), the digitally enabled smart grid is being jointly developed by JTC, the Energy Market Authority (EMA) and the Public Sector Science and Technology Policy and Plans Office under the Prime Minister’s Office.
They have appointed Singapore-based decarbonisation platform operator Univers and power generator and retailer PacificLight Power to design, build and operate the smart grid, integrating a battery energy storage system (BESS) with solar photovoltaic (PV) panels.
PacificLight plans to install the BESS underground at PDD, below a carpark space slated for charging electric buses. PacificLight is seeking approval from the Singapore Civil Defence Force, and the BESS is expected to have a capacity of 2 megawatt-hours (MWh), says Thomas Lim, PacificLight’s deputy general manager for business development at an Oct 30 media briefing.
Speaking at PDD’s eight-storey 86 Punggol Way — Singapore’s tallest industrial building constructed using timber — Lim says the 2MWh BESS will be able to power the building for “almost four hours”.
Meanwhile, PDD’s proposed solar PV system will produce over 3,000MWh of energy annually, equivalent to powering 680 four-room HDB flats, or “slightly less than 10%” of PDD’s expected energy demand in a year, says Lim in response to The Edge Singapore.
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These solar panels will be installed on at least four of PDD’s eight towers currently. PacificLight will operate and maintain the BESS and solar panels for the next 20 years, and Lim says the firm plans to install more solar panels in PDD in the future.
SP Group had signed a memorandum of understanding with JTC in October 2018 to collaborate on the PDD smart grid. However, the utilities group dropped out due to a “change in strategy”, says James Tan, director of the smart district division at JTC.
“However, they are still a very big partner of PDD; all the 80 [odd] electric vehicle chargers are supplied by them,” says Tan at the media briefing.
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86 Punggol Way, one of the buildings in PDD that could potentially have solar panels deployed on its roof
Demand response
During periods of peak demand, the national power grid can be put under stress due to the high electricity consumption. Changes in the weather and cloud cover throughout the day will also vary the power output from solar panels.
To reduce this stress on the national grid and PDD’s power supply, battery systems like the BESS can reduce consumption in peak periods by discharging energy to meet PDD’s electricity needs using renewable energy. The battery is then recharged during periods of low demand.
Univers’ smart grid controller will make these decisions by collecting real-time data and adjusting PDD’s power supply. It will also be integrated with JTC’s Open Digital Platform (OPD), which has already been developed. According to JTC’s Tan, this will allow them to “fuse non-electricity-related data” — from sources like visitor turnstiles and car park gantries — with existing sensors for better energy optimisation.
In the future, PDD’s smart grid could even feed power back to the national grid during peak demand periods, and receive an incentive payment.
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EMA established the Demand Response (DR) programme in 2016, which allows electricity customers to voluntarily reduce or shift their electricity consumption during periods of high demand to other times of the day. In return, electricity customers would receive incentive payments, or a share of the savings from the reduction in wholesale electricity prices.
EMA launched a two-year DR sandbox in 2023 to encourage participation in the DR programme. According to EMA, the sandbox more than doubled the registered DR capacity from 46 megawatts (MW) to 103MW.
Between 2023 and mid-2024, EMA says the DR programme resulted in over $700 million in savings for electricity buyers in Singapore’s wholesale electricity market.
According to a study commissioned by EMA, over 400MW of demand flexibility potential remains untapped in Singapore. “Commercial sectors — such as those reliant on heating, ventilation and air-conditioning — show potential for load-shifting, while certain industrial processes, like those involving gas production, offer opportunities for rescheduling operations to off-peak times.”
PacificLight’s Lim says the firm is in talks with EMA to allow PDD’s tenants to participate in the DR programme.
“Through this project, we’re trying to design and enhance an algorithm, where we can switch between using the battery storage as well as using the national grid,” says Nelson Liew, group director, new estates, JTC. “While there is some trading and we can sell [energy] back [to the grid] and have some financial incentives, the underlying fundamental [goal] is that we want to see how this can help enhance the resilience of the national grid.
Photo: Darren Soh for JTC
