KUALA LUMPUR: The recent electricity tariff changes should spark greater use of solar energy, say experts.
This would allow the country to wean off fossil fuels and meet the nation’s climate change goals, they said.
Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia (USIM) senior lecturer Dr Shahino Mah Abdullah said the percentage of electricity generated from solar was still low despite the fact that Malaysia gets a high amount of sunshine throughout the year.
“There is a lot of room for Malaysia to expand solar energy generation to ensure it becomes the country’s main source of energy. It’s not only clean, but it’s renewable and can be obtained freely from the sun,” said Shahino of USIM’s science and technology faculty.
According to the International Energy Agency, Malaysia uses a mixture of mostly coal, natural gas and oil as fuel to generate electricity.
“The solar panel manufacturing sector is booming and this has brought the prices to its lowest levels,” he said, reported Bernama.
His comments follow Tenaga Nasional’s electricity tariff hikes next year, especially for large companies and energy-hungry households.
Shahino added that solar energy was not new to Malaysia as there were many generation plants developed by local companies, including TNB.
However, the government needs to expand programmes such as Net-Energy Metering so that low and medium income households can benefit from installing solar panels.
“The programme allows surplus solar energy that is generated from your solar system to be redirected to the grid to reduce monthly electricity bills.
“This will also help the national utility to meet the country’s energy needs and reduce carbon dioxide emissions and help us reach zero emissions by 2020,” he said.
Another academician Assoc Prof Dr Jasrul Jamani Jamian said photovoltaic solar panel installations could reduce energy use and reduce the impact of Imbalance Cost Pass Through (ICPT) on consumers.
“Compared to a decade ago, prices are much lower now,” said the Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) electrical engineering lecturer.
“For instance, 10 kilowatt peak (kWp) 10 system years ago was around RM140,000, now it’s only RM40,000,” he said.
