Sarawak Energy shares rural electrification solutions with international audience
KUCHING: Sarawak Energy shared its rural electrification story with an international audience during a recent virtual sharing session.
In a statement, Sarawak Energy said the session organised by Chemonics Water Energy and Sustainable Cities PracAtice Area, in partnership with Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) was part of a series of six interlinked dialogues on the pathway to a lower carbon energy system.
Sarawak Energy was represented by its vice president for Rural Electrification Dr Chen Shiun during ‘Off Grid and Grid Interactive Microgrids’ session with Dr Arindam Maitra and Dr Ben York from EPRI who spoke on microgrid solutions as part of resilience strategies to mitigate outages and speed up restorations, among others.
Chen highlighted how Sarawak’s rural electricity coverage has risen from 56 per cent in 2009 to about 97 per cent by end 2021 to 30 Chemonics employees from around the world.
“Since 2009, about 130,000 rural households in Sarawak have access to 24-hour reliable electricity funded in part by allocation of RM2.37 billion under Projek Rakyat in 2019 for simultaneous implementation of various strategies under Accelerated Rural Electrification Masterplan.”
“The Sarawak Government, through the Ministry of Utilities Sarawak and its implementing agency, Sarawak Energy, targets to fully electrify Sarawak by 2025 or earlier via a suite of grid and off grid solutions.
“This includes Rural Electrification Scheme (RES) which extends the existing grid into the rural areas and Rural Power Supply Scheme (RPSS) where new substations, transmission and distribution lines are developed to extend existing gridlines to the interior,” he added.
Chen emphasised Sarawak Alternative Rural Electrification Scheme (Sares) fully funded by the Sarawak Government for standalone solar-powered systems to replace existing diesel gensets to power up remote villages too far from the grid.
“Sares is an innovative government-community initiative which has provided almost 12,000 households in more than 400 villages in
Sarawak’s hinterland with renewable and reliable 24/7 power. Beneficiary communities are trained on basic maintenance of the system and do not have to pay for electricity supply.
“The system provides 3,000Wh of renewable electricity per day, sufficient to power up a typical rural household’s basic needs such as lighting, fans, television, small refrigerator and rice cooker which reduces the need to travel to town to buy provisions and diesel for generator sets,” he added.
Founded in 1975, Chemonics is an employee-owned global development and consulting firm based in the US that helps United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and other donors develop and manage projects in developing nations on public health, health supply chains, natural resource management, economic development and trade, agriculture, water and energy. They have worked in over 150 countries, designing projects that address complex problems with a multi-disciplinary approach. Chemonics currently has projects in about 80 countries.