Appears to cover the key issues affecting Sabah ' s electricity supply needs and reliability problems

I am not a Sabahan , and neither have I lived in Sabah . But I have fond memories of work assignments in Sabah when I enjoyed some great memories of the landscape , friendly citizens and its delicious seafood cuisine .

About two decades ago , I was involved in the development of one of , if not the , first successful biomass ( mesocarp fibre and EFB - Empty Fruit Bunch ) fired RE power plant in Kunak in the East Coast Region ( ECR ) of Sabah . That RE power plant operated as designed for its licence duration from 2004 .

So , it was interesting to go through the SABAH ENERGY ROADMAP AND MASTERPLAN ( SE-RAMP ), rolled out recently . The SE-RAMP is a comprehensive and detailed document . It appears to cover the key issues affecting Sabah ' s electricity supply needs and reliability problems , especially for the consumer in the ECR .

Unfortunately , the ECR residents have had frequent power supply interruptions for a long time with the high SAIDI , as shown in the chart . SESB has done very well to reduce its SAIDI performance over the years .

It is also commendable that SESB has set an ambitious target to reduce its overall interruption from 232.1 minutes in 2021 to less than 100 minutes by 2030 .

The inadequacy of the generating capacity ( as shown by the low reserve margin of

BY G . LALCHAND

17.6 per cent ) has undoubtedly contributed to this deficiency . However , the proposal to increase this figure to the " industry standard " of 30-35 per cent by 2030 warrants review . To the best of my knowledge , there is no such " industry standard ". The optimum reserve margin should be determined according to the system ' s LOLE ( Loss of Load Expectation ). Depending on the system configuration , this value could range from about 10 per cent up to about 30 per cent .

The inadequate power generating capacity

must have also deterred potential economic development as industrial and commercial consumers who need an adequate and reliable power supply to encourage them to invest in their business interests would have been discouraged from doing so .

The chart below shows that the mismatch between the generation capacity and power demand between the ECR and the West Coast Region ( WCR ) necessitates power transfer from the WCR to the ECR .

Sabah was unfortunate when its proposal for a 300MW coal-fired power plant for the ECR was scuppered by severe opposition from some NGOs ( nongovernmental organisations ) and CSOs ( Civil Society Organisations ) over pollution concerns . It led to installing a diesel-fuelled generating plant to meet the ECR load demand to supplement the power transfer from the WCR .

Coincidently , the bulk of the palm oil mills ( POMs ) in Sabah are also in the ECR , which is experiencing a shortage of electricity generation capacity .

This makes it a good match for developing biomass / biogas RE power plants to enhance the capacity of ECR electricity .

In this context , I append below an extract from the May-June 2023 Chat for reference .

An apparent reason for the poor performance of biomass / biogas RE development