SABAH’S FIRST GEOTHERMAL POWER PLANT

Sabah’s first geothermal power plant

Local media at the site visit yesterday

KOTA KINABALU 16th June, 2011: The proposed geothermal site in Tawau has the potential to generate a geothermal power plant with a capacity of 67MW, an SESB official said yesterday.

Its general manager of system operation, Addie Ahmad said if the plant gets off the ground, it would be the first in Sabah.

“It uses renewable green energy, is eco-friendly and does not require fuel-burning to produce heat or electricity,” he said during a site visit and briefing on the importance of Sabah Load Despatch Centre (SLDC) at Jalan Bundusan in Penampang near here.

Addie said it will be good news when the plant is up and running because the geothermal power is considered to be sustainable energy production, clean and provides continuous power round the clock.

Meanwhile, he said the responsibility of the SLDC is to control and operate the Sabah Grid System (SGS) in a safe, reliable and economical manner.

The control of generation and load demand in the SGS is centralised at the SLDC.

Load dispatch under normal operation or real time operation is to ensure that Grid System frequency is at a nominal level and this is done by balancing the availability of generation capacity throughout Sabah against requirement of load demand, he said.

Surplus of generation provides adequate spinning reserve and in the event of grid supply interruption, the data acquisition and generation supply for station can now be obtained directly from Petronas through phone.

“Previously, these data were obtained manually from the individual Independent Power Producers (IPP). This has minimised the control on the dispatch regime,” he explained.

Addie also said that contingency plan to restore unexpected events was taken in order to bring back the grid system back into stability.

Under frequency load shedding, the process of disconnecting selected 11kV (kilovolt) feeders runs automatically.

He also explained on the Demand Side Management (DSM), which is a process of disconnecting the power supply to selected Large Power Consumers (LPC) with their own generators.

“It is very important to ensure that the grid system frequency is back to normal level otherwise the grid system may experience total collapse due to cascading generating sets tripping,” he said.