Power consumers urged to operate gensets
KOTA KINABALU: The Energy Commission of Sabah (ECoS) is encouraging large power consumers with their own generator sets (gensets) in the state to participate in the Demand Side Management (DSM) programme to reduce the grid load and avoid load shedding to consumers.
ECoS chief executive officer Datuk Abdul Nasser Abdul Wahid said the DSM programme has been implemented as an immediate mitigation measure beginning March 1 when the reserve margin dropped below the safe threshold level.
He said the DSM programme has been activated several times so far after the gensets at a major power plant were temporarily on outage for planned maintenance that could no longer be postponed.
“The outage will continue until the end of the month. Incidents like this are expected to continue until the end of this year due to the low reserve margin caused by lack of generation capacity in the Sabah Grid,” he said in a statement Tuesday.
He said large power consumers would operate their gensets upon instruction by Electricity Sendirian Berhad (SESB) during periods of critical shortage of generation capacity.
“So far, 19 large power consumers have participated in this DSM programme and it has successfully reduced the grid demand by up to 18MW when activated,” he said.
He said ECoS and Sabah Electricity Sendirian Berhad (SESB) will continue to identify potential consumers for the programme to provide an effective relief to the Sabah Grid system peak.
“Consumers who participate in the programme would be given compensation for the use of diesel to operate their gensets during the DSM period. However, manual load shedding may need to be done if the load reduction with DSM is still insufficient,” he said.
Subsequently, Nasser urged consumers to practice energy efficiency and energy conservation which can also help reduce load shedding, in addition to reducing their electricity bills and carbon emissions.
He said an example of efficient use of energy is to set one’s air conditioners at between 24 to 26 degrees Celcius.
“A temperature change from 20 to 24 degrees Celcius will save about 33 per cent of energy,” he said.
Another measure that can have an effect is to avoid, if possible, the use of high-powered kettles and the like during the peak period between 10am to 12 noon, 2pm to 4pm and 6pm to 8pm on normal working days, he said.