Harnessing The Sun And Wind: Inside Our Renewable Energy Future | Climate For Change | Ep 2/2

[Music] the energy industry must go beyond making cleaner fuel to quench the world's thirst for clean energy it must harvest the power of the wind and capture the light of the sun there are enough available sunshine to power the entire globe pioneering renewable energy takes guts it's one of the hardest things that i've done it's adventurous it's exciting but we need to do some sacrifices but brave souls could transform our world i can feel that i'm doing good for the people and also for the earth the sky or rather the ocean is the limit we have really a vast possibility of exporting solutions in the whole world this is a climate for [Music] change [Music] [Music] singapore-based enterprises are driving renewable energy to new frontiers across asia this story is about pioneers who are changing the region for good randy uh irving is an engineer whose specialty is wind power it's a strange vocation in singapore singapore promoted solar so i think about from 100 candidates let's say only about five six people studying win so i'm a little bit on the minority group but i think it's still great opportunities i continue my phd study in wind turbine technology and the scholarship by the singapore government under economic development board maybe singapore knows that the wind is also one of the future in the region so let's open up opportunity for me and also for the industry in the region for modern work i do side exploration and site hunting singapore is very good because it's centrally located in the region you can access the mekong area in the north or you go to the islands of indonesia philippines in the south and the east for wind engineering work so our work involves a lot of big data so we have about 20 monitoring wind monitoring stations across the region and these monitoring stations keep sending a lot of data that we need to process that we need to analyze irving's search for wind energy takes him to cambodia on 150 kilometer expedition from phnom penh to boco irving is heading out with his cambodian colleague soph foyne who is in charge of project development in cambodia they journey to a potential wind power site near the top of boco mountain which is about 950 meters above sea level [Music] it's very windy so when you come to sight seeing the grass the trees blown by the wind so it's a very good feeling nice confirmation that you are at the right location wind powers development in cambodia is quite new i must say we are quite lucky when we came here and we spotted this size as you can see around there is no residential area and the lands belong to the government after we received the approval from the government we conducted a feasibility study for this site we built big macmaster in 2017 100 meter tall it's equipped with a high quality sensor so if i can show so it's installed with this kind of anemometers so these anemometers is they call it first class anemometers so it's very important that you do wind measurement with high quality sensors and high quality structures so that when there's a wind farm you know very reliably what you will be getting out of the wind farm so in terms of electricity productions in term of generation supply to the grid stability all the stuff so this is really the real start of a serious wind development let me climb the map mask to see the logger so there's a box there it's like basically a small computer so we can monitor the sensor readings and the health of the systems like that just wearing that safety gear just to be safe [Music] it's adventurous i like it it's exciting but you just need to keep your speed up you need to keep also your fitness level because it requires a lot of traveling and spending a lot of time outdoors sometimes you get exhausted and thirsty very quickly it's windy and cold the steel is a little bit cold as well yeah it's nice and we have good reception here if you want to do video call i think it's go okay yeah the wing can you look at me so the sensor on this side are all working yeah both sides are working well okay this side too yep good earthing cable earthing cable yeah still normal okay we can confirm force for real that it has good wind resource after we collect measurements after one year of wind measurement we can do a engineering analysis and refinement of that wind map and after that we can see what kind of turbine we can select what kind of technology best for these sites and from that you can see whether this is generating enough power based on this green and as well as turbine selections and after that we can talk to government authorities on terms of infrastructures which will open up another discussion on feasibility of the site if authorities grant them approval this could be the site of the first wind power project in cambodia singapore is located just north of the equator where wind speeds are low and sunshine is more abundant solar is the only viable renewable energy resource we have but the only viable place that we can install our solar panels is on our rooftops and on the rooftop we often compete with air conditioning or other equipment in landscape singapore the local solar industry has been driven to float solar panels on water as they convert light to electricity they're also known as photovoltaics or pv my name is inter and i'm part of the sunset engineering team so the engineering team focuses on delivering solar projects from end to end from start to finish so our prior floating solar experience took place in the world's largest floating pv test bed so that was organized by ceres as well as pub so that project was located in the tangy reservoir so we participated actively in the project and that that was our prior experience for floating solar the pub series desperate at tenga reservoir provided singapore companies as well as international pv companies and opportunity to develop their manpower their engineering skill as well as the project execution skills in the field of floating pv the industry has gained confidence deploying increasingly large floating solar projects on singapore's freshwater reservoirs the next daring frontier is the sea so over here we have the five megawatts floating solar farm on the sea this is located in the streets of johor and we have roughly 13 000 panels sitting on top of roughly 30 000 floats the dimensions of the farm will be about 500 meters by 100 meters we expect it to generate around six thousand plus megawatt hours for an entire year it will roughly equate to powering 1200 four-room hdb flats for a period of one year so as far as i know this is a first in the world of this size certainly the sun saves project in the state of jahad is a significant milestone in floating tv industry there are few test sites available in different locations for example south korea and netherlands and in mild days but these are at a very small scale and not as bigger size as compared to a floating p project by sunset this project will give a very important information in terms of energy yield in terms of project execution engineering design as well as the operation and maintenance of nearshore floating pv systems so over there you can see scattered around also inverters which are floating alongside the solar panels they convert the electricity from dc to ac right and then the inverters will have cables coming to this platform that we're on which is the floating transformer platform so this transformer transforms the voltage from 800 volts to 22 kv and one sub c cable exits this transformer and it follows this path and goes down through the cable shoot into the c so this is a subsea cable that connects the floating solar farm to the substation that is on land on the singapore mainland the floating platform need to be able to manage the cable interconnections under the wind and the wave and the tidal variation encountered in the site if proven successful it will definitely demonstrate a reliable method of interconnection of floating pv to the grid so with any innovation project there are always new challenges that we face so in this particular offshore sea water floating solar what we faced was the the difference of the marine conditions right so that's something very new compared to what we faced during the first tengae reservoir project so part of which we have to deal with of course the salinity of the sea water environment right so that requires all the materials that are in contact with the water to be able to withstand that type of water conditions aside from that we have a more dynamic environment compared to a reservoir right so over here we have waves we have currents changing type levels all of which are new to us and we have to learn how to adapt to that kind of environment and more interestingly also we we face some surprising marine life right so we have monitor lizards that we found walking on top of the floats we also see uh larger birds like like egrets and also once or twice we have otters which are also crawling on top of the farm so those are all very new and somewhat interesting obstacles as well as challenges that we face so solar energy in singapore i think is has a lot of potential for growth right and a project like this also proves that it's very ripe for for blooming because it unlocks really a new area where we can do large-scale solar deployment instead of being limited by the land resources that we have in [Music] singapore [Music] with the wind measurements collected from boco mountain irving and sophoine give their boss olivier a good report about its wind energy potential it's proven the naysayers wrong even the timeline of the construction because when i first arrived to hear everybody say no no don't don't don't bother with cambodia there's no wind here you know look people have looked at it before so don't waste your time i love when i hear that because uh because of course that means that we think we could think of of something else and something different on the best news from the like we mentioned this morning the best news from the past cambodia is very special to me we are proposing and initiating the first it would be the first win project in cambodia every time we're talking to the government i think the message we have to pass is quite crucial because we are just at the beginning there is no wind project in cambodia so far we brought them to uh to vietnam to show them exactly what is a wind project about and fight misconceptions also the blue circle developed and built the first foreign-owned wind farm in vietnam in 2017 it was quite new and quite early in the history of wind power in vietnam we were very keen to see if a foreign company even from singapore could do it [Music] they launched a second wind farm in south vietnam in 2020 [Music] their new wind farm has 10 wind turbines combined they can generate over 40 megawatts of electricity per hour they feed the national grid an average of 450 megawatts per day enough to power 50 thousand households vietnam [Music] singapore [Music] the wind farm has some of the biggest wind turbines in southeast asia the diameter of the blades is 150 meters each 4 megawatt turbine weighs more than 130 tons and the tower is 105 meters tall [Music] foreign today this wind turbine is undergoing routine maintenance for the first time since it began operating three months ago after this the turbine will be serviced once a year company policy dictates that a turbine shouldn't be stopped for more than seven days a year through the power it generates a working turbine recovers an average of forty five thousand dollars of revenue per day as the wind farm is near the sea it faces wear and tear from gusts of wind sand and sea salt as well as thunderstorms but with proper maintenance the turbines are designed to weather those conditions over 50 years in the north of singapore on the straits of johor taningta and his team from sun seep are building the world's largest near-shore floating solar test bed it's challenging to deploy this in the sea with its waves and fluctuating tides so as much as possible we would like to do bulk of the installation on land because it's it's stable right but there are significant portions where we will still have to do on the water we launch 16 panels at a time and that's where they will be linked up sequentially to form a much larger unit they'll be attached by this nuts and bolts secured together so that they don't move even with the waves and movements of the type along the perimeter of the farm we will have anchoring points so each of these anchoring or mooring points will have an individual sinker attached to it so each sinker is about two tons they're made of concrete and then with chains attached to the parameter of the farm to hold it in place sun seep is building this project in collaboration with other small and medium-sized enterprises the subsea cables and 11 tonne transformer were installed with the help of a marine engineering company and the floating modules are the specialty of a construction company called iso team [Music] richard chan is iso team's general manager as you can see our floating modules behind me the design to withstand the forces of the sea over a long time and we did rigorous testing before eventually launching them into the scene richard says before they mastered floating structures they built their reputation maintaining and upgrading housing estates for town councils you can see from behind me we are doing our cosmetic cyclical rnr works to a housing estate which we do as our core business for the past two decades it's like making a old woman look young again right their work servicing housing blocks evolved into a journey to solar installation it's all way back in 215 iso team also does re-roofing to the rooftops or hdbs right so back then we realized there are there are other companies any ag companies also installing solar panels on the rooftop of hdbs that's where iso team got involved in solar panel installation as well iso team has roughly completed about seven eight projects of a solar panel installation in singapore and we've completed roughly about 15 megawatts so far making green landscaping for the housing development board led to their launch into floating construction behind me is a iconic floating wetland is here we are in pongo waterways as you can see the floating modules are modular in nature you can configure the floating wetland system into various size depending on the type of floating system or more island that you need the expertise they gain from past projects equipped them to install solar panels on floating modules this woodland sassanid floating solar project is an extension of both skill sets being merged into one for the personal level it does give me a lot of personal satisfaction it's our duty as a each citizen to do our part in terms of improving climate change in the region as around the globe [Music] the blue circle company has built two wind farms in vietnam and are currently building a third 40 megawatt project they aim to complete this wind farm by the middle of 2021 my name is herve and uh sometimes it's difficult in vietnamese so people call me also bond james bond and i'm working for the blue circle for now three years in uh wind energy i work for road construction civil wars construction railways construction four years ago my children say why not renewable energy so i changed and the reason why i came to asia also the blue circle is open for all countries thailand cambodia myanmar and vietnam but actually vietnam is most involved in the construction of new projects with two or three projects at the same time with my background of roads construction to install something uh exciting for me it's like a tower 100 meters tower on the top 120 tons so it's like a spaghetti with a big potatoes on the top and for me it was not possible in my mind it was quite new for me also but when we have the first production it's a real big milestone [Music] many new obstacles for us the first project we installed wind turbines in rice fields so the challenge in this case was to keep drainage the water and to send the water to the correct farmer here the challenge is the sun here the risk is the sun with the wind [Music] beyond braving the elements constructing a wind farm is a shipping and logistical challenge as the components of a wind turbine are huge [Music] the blades can be longer than 70 meters in remote places the engineering team has had to build straight new roads to carry the equipment when we bring the component is very large component till 90 meters convoys 90 meters so we cannot move it everywhere with this for the curves for the slope we have limitation so we are obliged to build specific roads soft roads avoid slope avoid closed curves and we build it to let the construction doing the necessary with heavy transportation building new roads has benefited local residents and local industries such as honey collecting and charcoal making when we build a road we bring the life people come back and use finally their land a road is life this is a real benefit for local people [Music] um um [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] my foreign four years since its conception the solar project in the streets north of singapore nears completion in early 2021. project engineer ying tur reflects on its progress it's one of the hardest things that i've done so that's quite incredible on a personal level to see something that was just an open sea you know a couple of years before and to of course put a lot of heart and soul into it and eventually seeing the the fruits of your your labor your effort uh come into fruition in the form of a solar farm each milestone that we that we achieve whether it's the singapore pr team coming together during covet right or the first launch of panels into the water and when you first use the meter and you can you detect that there's electricity generation that's all a part of the journey but each step of the way it has been challenging and encouraging and all in all certainly very happy and satisfied with how far we've come for this we will take a lot of the learnings of the challenges that we face and mitigate them better for future projects the five megawatt project by sunseep is first demonstration of floating pv project in in sea condition therefore more emphasis was paid to identify a location which is not exposed much to the element of the environment the wave and the wind conditions are also not extreme but these locations are very much closer to the malaysian border therefore provides a limited opportunity for wider scale deployment moving forward we need to look towards the southern side of the singapore which provide a larger scale near shore opportunities as well as these are more near to the industrial demand centers located here however as we move to this site we also encounter higher wind and wave conditions in addition to that some places it also encounters deeper seabed conditions for example at some places it sharply goes up to 90 meters of deep so this will require more resilient design of the floating pv system as well as resilient anchoring and mooding system for for these locations in addition to all these things depending upon how far the sea project is compared to the nearby shore we need to think about the proper evacuation method for the electricity though there are solutions available in the marine industry but they are usually costly and they need to match the cost expectation of pve industry which is usually very competitive [Music] whenever we go out and we look for new sites we always think of it as a potential place to develop solar and then provide green electron to the community so it always gives an excitement when people go there as a scientist or engineers or project developers they have some visual site investigation pictures and it gives a first level estimation of how is the side condition as we can see around here there are the wave and the wind is not that high and something similar type of locations can be evaluated for future deployment but having said that singapore maritime waters is one of the busiest and will remain likely so in the near future therefore these floating pv projects need to be developed in in the sense that not to interfere with this marine traffic and the anchorage point of ships researchers have been identifying areas where ships don't pass through or anchor they call it dead sea space a common example would be a space between at the back of the jetty between the jetty and the shoreline and that area is not utilized for any purposes and can be used to develop floating pv projects in that area according to the solar pv roadmap of singapore there are over 200 hectares of nearshore dead sea space that may suit floating solar projects [Music] certainly this unlocks a lot more potential space where you can install solar panels and therefore like empower singapore's green energy ambitions beyond that regionally i think if you look at the the islands in malaysia philippines indonesia right so there are largely archipelagos scattered around so so such a solution would possibly be quite interesting to them and we can then export such a solution to the overseas market as well there are a lot of islands which are isolated and would require power so these type of off-grid floating pv solutions will provide application in not only in singapore but in asean region nearby in principle i would say sky or rather the ocean is the limit however not all ocean and sea sides would be suitable for the development of the project abhishek says a site suitability depends on more than technical and economic factors they must first consider what impact a project may have on people and the environment [Music] my first bachelor's degree was in chemical engineering but which is very much to deal with the petrochemicals but then i quickly realized that solar is the future the future of solar is bright in singapore and worldwide there are a lot of new developments coming up and there is a huge potential in that sense [Music] singapore-based energy company the blue circle has established wind farms in vietnam now it seeks to seal a deal in cambodia to develop the country's first ever wind power project we are now deploying a lidar so basically we are using laser to measure the wind speed we are comparing the two devices at the moment just to make sure both are agreeable measuring wind speed accurately since we come into cambodia in 2016 we started to do wind measurement like what you can see here throughout the countries the battery is charging cambodia is interesting in terms of potential we look into the whole country we have at least i can say one gigawatt of potential side for wind development so for this side it's very promising in terms of wind resource we can talking about hundred megawatt at the moment we will start with 80 megawatt with the authorities and today happy to announce that this specifically the boko windpower project has already been accepted into cambodia power development plans for 2020 to 2030s this win project specifically is planned to be implemented between 2022 to 2024 the support from the cambodian government especially the ministry of mining and energy it's an indication that the countries is promoting renewable energies there's quite a nice potential in cambodia for wind power more than 2000 megawatts potential is a long long way to grow wind power in the country in the future cambodia is one of the highest growth in electricity consumption in the whole region and maybe in the whole world double digit 16 18 per year until this discovered years so it's it's it's really impressive irving's work has kept him in cambodia for about a month far from his wife and home in singapore the thing that you miss in cambodia is in my case my wife families you can of course replace it a little bit with some video call from time to time but it's something different [Music] she worries for health and for safety because i come to strange new places most of the time i'm also working for her here a lot in singapore so the plan is for me to be back in cambodia end of this month so again when i tell her a few days ago it's not easy again i need to travel again after just maybe about two weeks at home you just need to support each other and we want to achieve success and we need to do some sacrifices yeah but the transmission line last time we have not lost transmission back in the singapore office irving analyzes data from wind measuring stations across southeast asia there's less cost for us in fact if we can refinance as soon as while irving's data could show where to build the next wind power site it is finance that will ensure it becomes real then we can proceed to the the project land reservation the 40 megawatt wind farms in vietnam cost over 70 million dollars each the 80 megawatt project in cambodia could cost over a hundred million dollars [Music] main role i see for singapore in the future for us is green financing green financing i think is crucial for renewables because again it's a very big capital intensive sector the blue circle singaporean director of project development is hayden wu he seeks to get wind power projects financed in the country the stability of singapore government strict laws and regulations transparency helps to attract international banks to finance projects coming out of singapore companies so for the moment the singapore banks they are still rather risk adverse and having a very conservative opinion of financing renewable energy projects in the region we have seen the likes of for example the thai banks or the philippine banks they are very willing and they're very hungry to finance and invest in the renewable energy projects in the region so we hope we can play a part and to change this in fact we are working with several of the singapore banks to finance a few renewable energy deals across the region and of course the key strong point i would say here is singapore has a very strong bilateral relationship with the regional countries and this prevents double taxation and this helps to promote renewable energy development in the region working with the countries in the region of course it will benefit singapore with the potential of renewable electricity supply but also we can help the countries in the region by exporting technologies by helping put in systems and processes in place for a viable renewable electricity generation regime [Music] beyond exporting new ways to deploy solar panels singapore exports solar cell technology the solar energy research institute of singapore ceres researchers and develops new solar cells and new ways of manufacturing them their work is supported by public sector funding and industry partnerships at home and abroad our main motto is to commercialize the technology and create economic impact of the public dollars that we receive at this lab scientists seek to make solar cells better but what makes the solar cell good in the first place there are three parts to a good solar cell number one it has to be highly efficient number two it has to be low cost and number three very important one is that it has to be reliable stable for at least significant years for deployment reasons now what do i mean by highly efficient imagine a solar cell is 25 efficiency it means that out of the 100 percent of the sunlight that is falling in the solar cell only 25 is being harvested ceres has developed monopoly solar cells patented manufacturing techniques make them highly efficient low cost and reliable my name is naomi nandakumar i am a research fellow at service today i head the solar cell innovations team where we just try to improve cell technology on silicon wafers a solar cell is a device that converts light into electricity the light spectrum is vast and you can only harness a part of this so our job is to capture as much of this light as possible and to increase the cell efficiency so that most of it is converted into electricity so the silicon wafer that we get the surface is very shiny and this uh is not useful for the solar cell because we we don't want the light to be reflected we want to trap as much light as possible so the first step we do in the monopoly process is to texture the wafer and this just means um the a chemical process step that forms pyramids on the wafer surface so the pyramids help scatter light into the silicon and prevents reflection of the light so we are able to capture as much light as possible into the silicon cell [Music] this texturing process can be done twice as fast due to a breakthrough by cerris the ultra high speed deposition process allows twice as fast of manufacturing which means it reduces cost by half for our partners [Music] then we have a second chemistry step to clean any overlap from the rear to the front again to ensure that the front and the rear basically don't meet because we need them to be separate to generate electricity the cleaning step prevents additional loss of these electrons and electricity [Music] if this happens in an appropriate way then it allows higher reliability of the products ceres monopoly techniques have been embraced by the world's largest solar manufacturer jinko sola from china [Music] jinko is exploring adapting the technology to make its next generation of solar cells ceres is one of our major research partners we set up a four year joint project together to cover many areas of solar cell research in including developing high efficiency solar cell and monopoly technologies we are using research facilities at both jingle solar and series in singapore to develop technologies and joint experiments together the global trend towards renewable energies will create us a lot of chances opportunities but also give our pressure to produce better and better products we still need more higher efficiencies such as close to 30 percent or even more that will need the effort from both industry and the research labs [Music] what made solar viable for us firstly the technology advancement that made high efficiency solar panels possible the second was the installed capacity worldwide especially in china that began leveraging economies of scale that led to the drop of the cost of solar electricity today in many parts of the world the solar energy is the cheapest source and going forward by 2050 i bet it will be the dominant source of electricity in the world in the sun belt of the world there are enough available sunshine to power the entire globe the only challenge is intermittency and space solar and wind power fluctuate with the weather so their electricity output is less steady than power from fossil fuels so how will this change when you go to phase 2 which parts will be changing to even out intermittency scientists at the energy research institute at ntu are reimagining the power grid as well the power grid of today is more or less unchanged from 100 years ago from the days of edison and tesla so the focus of the research in this laboratory is on the smart grid of the future so we look at new technologies that can help with optimization of electricity generation electricity dispatch as well as energy efficiency from an end-use perspective electrification is probably one of the largest opportunity for us to make progress towards our 2050 goal in singapore to reduce our emissions by 50 percent we really need to electrify every aspect of our transportation as well as industrial sectors so to really address the challenges of reducing emissions we need to come up with innovations in every aspect of the energy sector the opportunity for singapore is this that if you do this right in singapore we have really a vast possibility of exporting solutions to other tropical mega cities in the whole world so i i wanted to look for growth industry that i can be part of and the clean energy industry was a very good choice so it requires a lot of great perseverance and but we have fun along the way so i think that's that's that's an important aspect as well i'm passionate with what i do with clean energy we preserve the climate we preserve the earth we produce electricity without emissions i like this job because i can feel that i'm doing good for the people and also for the earth [Music] you

Channel: CNA Insider

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Keywords: Climate For Change, climate change, environment, sustainability, renewable energy, clean energy, green energy, Blue Circle, big data, electricity, wind power, wind energy, wind farm, Vietnam, Cambodia, Sunseap, solar power, floating solar, solar panel, SERIS, Singapore, CNA, CNA Insider, Channel NewAsia, Asian perspective, Asia news

Id: UeVfqiuZh9s

Length: 47min 39sec (2859 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 27 2021