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FAST
SINGAPORE: About 10 per cent — that is the increase in electricity prices that could potentially hit households from July.
SP Group now retails electricity at 27.27 cents per kilowatt hour (kWh), which is already a 2.1 per cent increase on the earlier amount, before the Goods and Services Tax (GST).
But the Temasek-owned group had not fully priced in the conflict in the Middle East when it set this regulated tariff for the current quarter.
The next spike may bring the price to about 30 cents per kWh, according to Rystad Energy senior consultant David Chew. And he expects prices to continue climbing for a period of maybe six months.
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WATCH: How much is your electricity bill about to go up? (23:05)
This is even if the situation in the Middle East improves quickly and even though less than 10 per cent of Singapore’s natural gas was coming from Qatar before its supply disruption.
Qatar was responsible for nearly a fifth of the global supply of liquefied natural gas (LNG) before the conflict, so competition for alternative supplies is driving up prices.
The energy shock has become more than a supply chain issue, however, owing to the wider damage to energy-linked facilities, which Rystad estimates to be as much as US$58 billion.
As a result, “you could see elevated (electricity) prices for a longer period”, said Chew. Based on his consulting firm’s assessments, Qatar in particular may need three to five years to “fully bring back” its LNG supply.
David Chew is an analyst who studies the gas and power markets.
With nearly 95 per cent of Singapore’s electricity generated using imported natural gas and with prices going up, Talking Point explores whether the country can improve on its electricity mix and what households can do to save money now.
Amid the global energy crunch, Singapore is procuring additional LNG cargoes from countries such as Australia, Mozambique and the United States.
It has “done a great job in terms of diversifying its portfolio of gas”, said Chew. “That way, we have a better supply security than many other countries.”
But that is quite apart from the price. For one thing, gas prices have historically been linked to the prices of oil, which is the maturer commodity. “With oil prices climbing,” he noted, “you can see gas prices rising.”
Spot LNG prices averaged about US$10 to US$11 before the war, increasing to nearly US$18 in mid-May. That is an indication of the premium Singapore has had to pay for new supplies while its reserves of natural gas remain untapped.
Screenshot from file footage showing a liquefied natural gas (LNG) carrier at the Singapore LNG Terminal on Jurong Island.
“These alternative sources … are to meet regular, ongoing energy needs,” said Jesse Chin, the director of the Energy Market Authority’s energy strategy and planning department.
“But going (forward), … (it’s a) reminder to all of us that we can’t solely depend or remain largely dependent on imports.”
The EMA is studying low-carbon energy sources including geothermal systems and carbon capture, utilisation and storage. “Even nuclear energy is an option,” he added.
But these options are some way off compared to solar energy, which Singapore has bet on since introducing solar panels on Housing and Development Board (HDB) rooftops in 2008.
For now, solar power makes up a small part of the electricity mix: 2.5 per cent as at the first half of last year, with official projections for 2050 indicating it will provide 10 per cent of Singapore’s needs.
Screenshot from drone footage of the Sembcorp Tengeh Floating Solar Farm at Tengeh Reservoir. (Source: Sembcorp Industries)
This is below the current share of solar energy in land-constrained places such as Cyprus (23.2 per cent of electricity generated) and Malta (about 15 per cent).
Still, Singapore is “probably the most solar-dense city” and “one of the leading countries” when it comes to deploying solar panels in an urban context, said Solar Energy Research Institute of Singapore deputy chief executive officer Thomas Reindl.
To overcome space constraints, however, he cited a need to “think out of the box” and go beyond rooftop panels by, for example, creating solar canopies over existing infrastructure “without interfering in the originally intended use of that infrastructure”.
“Can we use the facades of a building? Can we overarch car parks, which has a side benefit (when) the cars don’t heat up that much? Can we overarch flood canals?” he suggested.
Graphic representation of solar canopies created using artificial intelligence. (Source: Solar Energy Research Institute of Singapore)
This is where new technologies come in useful, offering deployment options that “we may not even see today”. For example, there has been “a fair bit of research” on new thin-film technologies, he cited.
“They can be as light as foil, and then you don’t need massive structures any more … for conventional solar panels,” he said. “We can overarch vast spaces with very lean technologies, which can also be aesthetically pleasing.”
This future is “probably five to 10 years” down the road. “The technology is already being developed. We’ll see the first test beds in the next few years,” he added.
Researchers are now making a “reassessment of the assumptions” about how far solar energy could go in Singapore, he said. “We expect that it’ll be much more than the 10 per cent.”
Thomas Reindl is one of the key architects of the floating solar farm at Tengeh Reservoir.
In some densely populated cities, it is mandatory to install solar panels on certain new buildings. Such a regulation took effect last year in Tokyo, for instance.
Singapore, meanwhile, has no such plans at this stage, the Ministry of Trade and Industry said this month in a parliamentary reply.
Asked if more commitment was needed, Reindl noted that most of the photovoltaic installations in Singapore are driven by government initiatives like the SolarNova programme, through which half of all HDB blocks have had solar panels installed as at December.
With installations having been extended to all government agencies, he said the government is “doing an outstanding job by walking the talk”.
Screenshot from footage of solar panels on the roof of a Housing and Development Board block. (Source: Sembcorp Industries)
While the push for solar energy continues, there are some short-term fixes for households as they brace for higher electricity prices.
Customers who already bought a fixed-price plan — lasting 12 or 24 months, for instance — from private electricity retailers prior to the global energy crisis will not be affected.
“The impact will arise only when they next have to renew their price plan,” pointed out Lim Han Kwang, the CEO of Geneco, one of 10 electricity retailers in Singapore.
Some of the price plans have gone up more than others since tensions in the Middle East escalated. That has to do with how the power generation companies hedge against fluctuations of gas prices.
The companies buy natural gas at different timings, which means they secure their gas at different prices. “As a result of different strategies and different risk appetites, all generation companies would have a different cost structure,” said Lim.
Talking Point host Diana Ser in a buggy on Jurong Island with Geneco chief executive officer Lim Han Kwang.
His company is now retailing its 12-month plan, for instance, at 29.20 cents/kWh, inclusive of GST. Asked what consumers should be comparing when choosing how to pay for electricity, he replied that it would depend on their “personal risk appetite”.
“If you stay on the regulated tariff, you’re subject to the quarterly revision. It could be higher, it could be lower,” he said.
“If you want peace of mind (and) certainty in terms of rate, a 12-month or even a 24-month (plan) will be great for you.”
Whichever consumers choose, there are ways to save money by managing usage.
Eugene Chia, who has a startup helping schools and commercial buildings to track and optimise their energy use, installed energy monitoring devices in his own home to find out how much electricity his individual appliances were using.
His findings, based on one week of data, showed that “vampire energy” was being wasted, with “money thrown away” because there was no benefit from the energy use. Smart televisions are one of the biggest culprits.
“About 5 to 10 per cent of energy is being wasted even when we’ve switched off the TV using the remote,” he said. “The TV is on standby and still feeding off the energy.”
That works out at about S$4.70 (US$3.70) a month, so he recommends switching off the TV network’s main switches after a household is done watching the TV.
For people whose switches are concealed, one solution is to buy smart plugs. The plugs will identify devices that are in idle and then cut off the energy. “Hence it’d be zero consumption,” he said.
“These typically cost S$10 to S$40, and the price difference comes from the type of features that are inside the plug, the ratings and the safety credentials.”
A smart plug.
Water dispensers with a hot and cold function are another culprit and can consume a “massive amount” of idle energy.
“(They) have to be constantly re-boiling and cooling the water — even though you’re not actively dispensing water — so that you have instant cold or instant hot water,” he highlighted. “There’ll be constant spikes in energy.”
He recommends switching off these dispensers before leaving for work if there is no one at home during the day, otherwise “in a typical use case, that works out to about S$10.70 a month that’s just flushed down the drain”.
His household uses about S$170 of electricity per month. Unsurprisingly, air-conditioning constitutes 60 per cent of the bill, and even when not in use, it consumes just shy of S$5 a month worth of vampire energy.
Eugene Chia is the chief operating officer for Ecovolt Technologies.
In older HDB flats, the main switch — a fuse switch with a red-light indicator, like a water heater switch — is easily accessible. In homes where the switch is not indoors, idle energy from the air-conditioning system is hard to cut.
Nonetheless, there are savings to be made on other appliances: Sound bar (27 cents); air purifier (55 cents); Wi-Fi router (74 cents); washing machine (85 cents); and water heater, when switched off at the mains (S$4.10). They add up to S$6.51 a month.
As a rule of thumb, the larger the device, the more energy it consumes, said Chia. “Also, if it does cooling or heating or is connected to a network, these devices would typically consume more energy.”
Watch this episode of Talking Point here. The programme airs on Channel 5 every Thursday at 9.30pm.
Source: CNA/dp
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FAST
SINGAPORE: About 10 per cent — that is the increase in electricity prices that could potentially hit households from July.
SP Group now retails electricity at 27.27 cents per kilowatt hour (kWh), which is already a 2.1 per cent increase on the earlier amount, before the Goods and Services Tax (GST).
But the Temasek-owned group had not fully priced in the conflict in the Middle East when it set this regulated tariff for the current quarter.
The next spike may bring the price to about 30 cents per kWh, according to Rystad Energy senior consultant David Chew. And he expects prices to continue climbing for a period of maybe six months.
CNA Games
Show More Show Less
WATCH: How much is your electricity bill about to go up? (23:05)
This is even if the situation in the Middle East improves quickly and even though less than 10 per cent of Singapore’s natural gas was coming from Qatar before its supply disruption.
Qatar was responsible for nearly a fifth of the global supply of liquefied natural gas (LNG) before the conflict, so competition for alternative supplies is driving up prices.
The energy shock has become more than a supply chain issue, however, owing to the wider damage to energy-linked facilities, which Rystad estimates to be as much as US$58 billion.
As a result, “you could see elevated (electricity) prices for a longer period”, said Chew. Based on his consulting firm’s assessments, Qatar in particular may need three to five years to “fully bring back” its LNG supply.
David Chew is an analyst who studies the gas and power markets.
With nearly 95 per cent of Singapore’s electricity generated using imported natural gas and with prices going up, Talking Point explores whether the country can improve on its electricity mix and what households can do to save money now.
SINGAPORE’S ENERGY EFFORTS
Amid the global energy crunch, Singapore is procuring additional LNG cargoes from countries such as Australia, Mozambique and the United States.
It has “done a great job in terms of diversifying its portfolio of gas”, said Chew. “That way, we have a better supply security than many other countries.”
But that is quite apart from the price. For one thing, gas prices have historically been linked to the prices of oil, which is the maturer commodity. “With oil prices climbing,” he noted, “you can see gas prices rising.”
Spot LNG prices averaged about US$10 to US$11 before the war, increasing to nearly US$18 in mid-May. That is an indication of the premium Singapore has had to pay for new supplies while its reserves of natural gas remain untapped.
Screenshot from file footage showing a liquefied natural gas (LNG) carrier at the Singapore LNG Terminal on Jurong Island.
“These alternative sources … are to meet regular, ongoing energy needs,” said Jesse Chin, the director of the Energy Market Authority’s energy strategy and planning department.
“But going (forward), … (it’s a) reminder to all of us that we can’t solely depend or remain largely dependent on imports.”
The EMA is studying low-carbon energy sources including geothermal systems and carbon capture, utilisation and storage. “Even nuclear energy is an option,” he added.
But these options are some way off compared to solar energy, which Singapore has bet on since introducing solar panels on Housing and Development Board (HDB) rooftops in 2008.
For now, solar power makes up a small part of the electricity mix: 2.5 per cent as at the first half of last year, with official projections for 2050 indicating it will provide 10 per cent of Singapore’s needs.
Screenshot from drone footage of the Sembcorp Tengeh Floating Solar Farm at Tengeh Reservoir. (Source: Sembcorp Industries)
This is below the current share of solar energy in land-constrained places such as Cyprus (23.2 per cent of electricity generated) and Malta (about 15 per cent).
Still, Singapore is “probably the most solar-dense city” and “one of the leading countries” when it comes to deploying solar panels in an urban context, said Solar Energy Research Institute of Singapore deputy chief executive officer Thomas Reindl.
To overcome space constraints, however, he cited a need to “think out of the box” and go beyond rooftop panels by, for example, creating solar canopies over existing infrastructure “without interfering in the originally intended use of that infrastructure”.
“Can we use the facades of a building? Can we overarch car parks, which has a side benefit (when) the cars don’t heat up that much? Can we overarch flood canals?” he suggested.
Graphic representation of solar canopies created using artificial intelligence. (Source: Solar Energy Research Institute of Singapore)
This is where new technologies come in useful, offering deployment options that “we may not even see today”. For example, there has been “a fair bit of research” on new thin-film technologies, he cited.
“They can be as light as foil, and then you don’t need massive structures any more … for conventional solar panels,” he said. “We can overarch vast spaces with very lean technologies, which can also be aesthetically pleasing.”
This future is “probably five to 10 years” down the road. “The technology is already being developed. We’ll see the first test beds in the next few years,” he added.
Researchers are now making a “reassessment of the assumptions” about how far solar energy could go in Singapore, he said. “We expect that it’ll be much more than the 10 per cent.”
Thomas Reindl is one of the key architects of the floating solar farm at Tengeh Reservoir.
In some densely populated cities, it is mandatory to install solar panels on certain new buildings. Such a regulation took effect last year in Tokyo, for instance.
Singapore, meanwhile, has no such plans at this stage, the Ministry of Trade and Industry said this month in a parliamentary reply.
Asked if more commitment was needed, Reindl noted that most of the photovoltaic installations in Singapore are driven by government initiatives like the SolarNova programme, through which half of all HDB blocks have had solar panels installed as at December.
With installations having been extended to all government agencies, he said the government is “doing an outstanding job by walking the talk”.
Screenshot from footage of solar panels on the roof of a Housing and Development Board block. (Source: Sembcorp Industries)
COST-SAVING MEASURES FOR HOUSEHOLDS
While the push for solar energy continues, there are some short-term fixes for households as they brace for higher electricity prices.
Customers who already bought a fixed-price plan — lasting 12 or 24 months, for instance — from private electricity retailers prior to the global energy crisis will not be affected.
“The impact will arise only when they next have to renew their price plan,” pointed out Lim Han Kwang, the CEO of Geneco, one of 10 electricity retailers in Singapore.
Some of the price plans have gone up more than others since tensions in the Middle East escalated. That has to do with how the power generation companies hedge against fluctuations of gas prices.
The companies buy natural gas at different timings, which means they secure their gas at different prices. “As a result of different strategies and different risk appetites, all generation companies would have a different cost structure,” said Lim.
Talking Point host Diana Ser in a buggy on Jurong Island with Geneco chief executive officer Lim Han Kwang.
His company is now retailing its 12-month plan, for instance, at 29.20 cents/kWh, inclusive of GST. Asked what consumers should be comparing when choosing how to pay for electricity, he replied that it would depend on their “personal risk appetite”.
“If you stay on the regulated tariff, you’re subject to the quarterly revision. It could be higher, it could be lower,” he said.
“If you want peace of mind (and) certainty in terms of rate, a 12-month or even a 24-month (plan) will be great for you.”
Whichever consumers choose, there are ways to save money by managing usage.
Related articles:
Eugene Chia, who has a startup helping schools and commercial buildings to track and optimise their energy use, installed energy monitoring devices in his own home to find out how much electricity his individual appliances were using.
His findings, based on one week of data, showed that “vampire energy” was being wasted, with “money thrown away” because there was no benefit from the energy use. Smart televisions are one of the biggest culprits.
“About 5 to 10 per cent of energy is being wasted even when we’ve switched off the TV using the remote,” he said. “The TV is on standby and still feeding off the energy.”
That works out at about S$4.70 (US$3.70) a month, so he recommends switching off the TV network’s main switches after a household is done watching the TV.
For people whose switches are concealed, one solution is to buy smart plugs. The plugs will identify devices that are in idle and then cut off the energy. “Hence it’d be zero consumption,” he said.
“These typically cost S$10 to S$40, and the price difference comes from the type of features that are inside the plug, the ratings and the safety credentials.”
A smart plug.
Water dispensers with a hot and cold function are another culprit and can consume a “massive amount” of idle energy.
“(They) have to be constantly re-boiling and cooling the water — even though you’re not actively dispensing water — so that you have instant cold or instant hot water,” he highlighted. “There’ll be constant spikes in energy.”
He recommends switching off these dispensers before leaving for work if there is no one at home during the day, otherwise “in a typical use case, that works out to about S$10.70 a month that’s just flushed down the drain”.
His household uses about S$170 of electricity per month. Unsurprisingly, air-conditioning constitutes 60 per cent of the bill, and even when not in use, it consumes just shy of S$5 a month worth of vampire energy.
Eugene Chia is the chief operating officer for Ecovolt Technologies.
In older HDB flats, the main switch — a fuse switch with a red-light indicator, like a water heater switch — is easily accessible. In homes where the switch is not indoors, idle energy from the air-conditioning system is hard to cut.
Nonetheless, there are savings to be made on other appliances: Sound bar (27 cents); air purifier (55 cents); Wi-Fi router (74 cents); washing machine (85 cents); and water heater, when switched off at the mains (S$4.10). They add up to S$6.51 a month.
As a rule of thumb, the larger the device, the more energy it consumes, said Chia. “Also, if it does cooling or heating or is connected to a network, these devices would typically consume more energy.”
Watch this episode of Talking Point here. The programme airs on Channel 5 every Thursday at 9.30pm.
You may wish to also read:
Source: CNA/dp
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CNA's best current affairs documentaries with a deeper look at issues affecting Asia, sent to your inbox weekly.
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Continue reading...