Datuk Seri Wilfred Madius Tangau.- Filepic/The Star
KOTA KINABALU: Coal power plants are an option for Sabah to generate electricity, says Datuk Seri Madius Tangau.
The newly appointed Sabah Electricity Sdn Bhd (SESB) chairman said with the power supply still unstable in the state, there has to be various options for more power generations to tap into so that a long-term feasible solution is found.
He said ultimately, the main objective is to solve Sabah’s perennial problem once and for all, and it can only be done if the baseload is stable and sufficient.
“Coal is the cheapest, it can address the baseload issue and it is stable.
"Gas is best in terms of stability but we do not have enough of that. So we need the support from suppliers, in this case - Petronas,” said Tangau during the KupiKupi FM and Sabah Way Forward online discussion recently.
Without the support, he said the power supply would be very expensive.
“As for coal, people do not realise its potential,” he added.
He said in the peninsula, 40% power generation is from coal and Sarawak too uses coal power plants, even though they have hydro generators.
Tangau said countries like Taiwan also uses coal but in Sabah, there are too many people playing romance with the environment.
”Sabah used to have a coal power plant and if it had not been shut down, we would have had 300MW of power and the people would be much better off now, instead of still facing constant power outages and rationing till today,” he said.
He said the dams are also a useful source of energy, among other many proposals such as using solar, wind, hydro, waves and geothermal as alternative power sources.
However, they all have their limitations, Tangau said.
He said the current issue faced by Sabah in the power generating industry is that the cables are still old and ‘coatless’, which means the power line is more susceptible to short circuits.
He said there are some 5000km of cables or RM1bil worth of damages that need to be replaced or coated, and this takes about 20 years to complete as Sabah can only replace up to 300km annually.
“So meaning, with the current rate of replacing or coating 300km of cables per year, we can only get it all replaced in about 20 years time, unless the federal government gives us the RM1bil to replace all at once,” said Tangau.
He said it would also help a lot and solve this problem if Sabah had its own power generation source.
He said Sabah is now gaining more attention from investors and it would need to keep up with the requirements such as basic power supply if it wanted to keep and continue attracting more investors.
“At the end of the day, SESB as the power provider cannot do it alone because we require support from all stakeholders including the government (in policy making and funds), the people and the investors,” added Tangau.
