JTC tapped Univers and PacificLight to launch Singapore’s first district-level smart grid in the Punggol Digital District (PDD), integrating solar panels with a battery energy storage system to improve energy resilience and reduce costs.

The business park’s smart grid will harness solar energy, store it in batteries and distribute it around the neighborhood or, in the future, feed the electricity back into the national grid, said Nelson Liew, director of the New Energy Group. domains of JTC. , during a press briefing.

This on-site renewable energy production is expected to reduce electricity costs for JTC and PDD tenants, marking an important step towards sustainable urban development.

Under the partnership, Singapore-based decarbonization software company Univers provides the smart grid controller, and electricity retailer PacificLight installs the equipment, including the rooftop photovoltaic (PV) solar panels and the battery energy storage system. PacificLight will operate and maintain the equipment for the next 20 years.

The district’s solar panels are expected to produce more than 3,000 megawatt hours of clean energy per year, or just under 10 percent of the PDD’s demand.

Currently in the design phase, the smart grid is being developed jointly by JTC, the Energy Market Authority (EMA), as well as the Science and Technology Policy and Plans Office of the Public Sector (S&TPPO) under the Cabinet of the Prime Minister. It is expected to be completed by mid-2026.

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Zahir Siddique, chief delivery officer at Univers, said the smart grid software will be designed to include features to handle future use cases. The interfaces between the smart grid and the Open Digital Platform will also be defined.

Once completed, the smart grid will enable electricity consumers in the PDD to participate in the demand response program launched by the EMA in 2016; In this framework, consumers can choose to voluntarily schedule their electricity consumption from peak to off-peak periods, and receive an incentive bonus for doing so.

In the future, the smart grid can also support Singapore’s national grid. Jonathan Tai, senior director of business development at PacificLight, said: “What we are going to test here (in PDD) is that when the smart grid controller detects (spikes in energy prices), it triggers the automatic transfer switch, so that instead of providing power to the JTC loads, it goes directly to the national grid.

Data should be generated from the smart grid, such as the precise amount of energy drawn from the grid and solar PV panels, as well as the amount consumed by each tenant.

James Tan, director of JTC’s smart neighborhoods division, said that with this data, the team can explore the use of machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), and potentially optimize the system through to modeling simulations.

There is potential for additional energy savings of up to 20%, thanks to AI and machine learning.

Asked how the success of the smart grid would be measured, JTC’s Liew listed three factors: The first is whether the smart grid can operate seamlessly within the domain, including automatic switching between rejection and domain and to the national network at the right time, at the right price and at the right price. environment.

The second factor is whether the smart grid can generate cost savings for the parties involved, and how much these savings are; the third factor is the extent to which all members of the field can be involved in this sustainability journey.