[A] MITIGATION OF SOLAR INTERMITTENCY

Singapore will be expecting significant solar deployments locally: The Government announced raising solar adoption to 1GWp beyond 2020 and implementing carbon tax from Jan 2019 onwards, strengthening price signals to encourage greater solar deployment. Improvements in technology is also driving down the cost of solar energy.

However, any power system with significant penetration of solar energy for electricity generation must manage intermittency appropriately, so as not to compromise grid stability and reliability i.e. the power system needs to ensure that there is sufficient back-up capacity (i.e. reserves) available when weather conditions change. 

Furthermore, EMA is reviewing feedback received from industry consultation on the Intermittency Pricing Mechanism in 2017. This will incentivise IGS installations to come up with solutions to proactively manage their intermittency.

Companies are encouraged to design and develop innovative and cost effective solutions to mitigate solar intermittency for solar companies. The proposed solutions could cover but not limited to solutions relating to smart inverter controls, distributed solar-storage controls.

Solution should help to manage solar intermittency and reduce the intermittency cost that it imposes on the system.

Solutions should adapt to existing installations and infrastructure i.e. brownfield deployments / retrofitting.

Solutions should not be available ‘off-the-shelf’.

The solution developed should help to manage solar intermittency and reduce the intermittency cost that it imposes on the system.