Impacts of Photovoltaics and Electromobility on the Singaporean Energy Sector

Abstract

Singapore has a steady rise in its electricity demand. The Singaporean electricity supply system relies so far heavily on fossil fuels, especially gas and oil, which are both mainly imported from Malaysia and Indonesia. This makes the electricity system in Singapore rather vulnerable to price variations and possible political conflicts with neighbouring countries. A short term solution is the construction of a LNG (liquefied natural gas) terminal which opens supply options to many sources in the world. In the long term, renewable energies such as photovoltaics will certainly be introduced into the Singapore's energy system in a more significant way. This paper discusses the possibility to produce substantial amounts of electricity by solar photovoltaics (PV). In addition, the integration of electromobility in Singapore is analysed. Using PV and electric vehicles (EV), the future primary energy demand and CO2 emissions in Singapore could be reduced significantly. The paper will describe the TIMES (The Integrated MARKAL (Market Allocation) EFOM (Energy Flow Optimisation Model) System) model for Singapore which is developed within the project TUM CREATE (Technische Universität München Campus for Research Excellence and Technological Enterprise). TUM CREATE is a research programme sponsored by the Singapore National Research Foundation (NRF). One research goal of a sub-project in TUM CREATE is to develop scenarios of the future energy demand and energy supply in Singapore under various boundary conditions, especially oil and gas prices or policies to reduce import dependencies etc. All upstream and downstream sectors of the energy system, including traffic and heavy industry like refineries, will be part of the developed model. First results about the impact of PV and electromobility on Singapore's primary energy demand and CO2 emissions are presented here.