Solar energy in Malaysia: Current state and prospects
Introduction
The era of generating electric power in very large steam-powered central stations seems to have ended. The increased concerns for environmental impacts of conventional fossil fuels, most importantly those related to climate change, has been the main factor driving the transition towards green energy and generation of power most favourably from renewable energy sources that are abundant and free [1]. Governments and industries all around the world are increasingly looking for ways to reduce the greenhouse emissions from their operations with a major focus on the use and installation of sustainable renewable energy systems [2]. Solar energy is the most promising backup energy as it has many advantages over other resources. Solar energy is a naturally available and clean energy source derived from the sun that can be exploited directly to generate electricity [3]. No release of pollutant, low maintenance and high reliability, with life span expectation of 20–30 years made solar power a favourable source of energy to be used in the future [4]. There are enormous applications of photovoltaic technology such as solar water heating, solar drying and solar PV; however, solar applications were first introduced for rural electrification and telecommunication [5], [6].
Section snippets
Geographic profile of Malaysia
Malaysia is positioned on the South China Sea and lies between 1° and 7° in North latitude and 100° and 120° in East longitude [7]. Malaysia is crescent-shaped which consist of Peninsular Malaysia (West Malaysia) and states on the island of Borneo, namely Sabah and Sarawak (East Malaysia). The total land area is about 330,000 sq km of which almost 60% is made up of East Malaysia and the balance of 40% made up by the Peninsular Malaysia. The majority of the population is concentrated in Peninsular
Current energy situation in Malaysia
Currently, Malaysia is adopting the 5th Fuel Diversification Policy (FDP) which was introduced in 1999 [9]. The introduction of FDP was to reduce Malaysia's over-reliance on a specific fuel type and to achieve a more balanced supply mix between natural gas, oil, coal and hydropower. The country is embarking on a gradual change for fuel consumption from depending solely on one specific source of energy to a mix of fuel sources derived from hydropower and coal [10]. Based on the 9th Malaysia Plan
Solar energy applications in Malaysia
In Malaysia, the solar energy applications can be divided into two main categories: solar thermal application and photovoltaic (PV) technologies. Solar thermal is a technology where the heat from solar energy is harnessed for heating purposes while photovoltaic is a technology where arrays of cells which contain solar photovoltaic material convert the solar radiation into direct current electricity [19].
The prospect of solar energy in Malaysia
There are 5 major areas of research and development by universities in Malaysia including inverters, PV concentrators, solar cells fabrications and characterization, hybrid systems and energy conversion tracking systems. Research works undertaken by the local universities are developing grid-connected (3 kW) inverter by University of Malaya (UM), developing solar cell by University Science Malaysia (USM), developing organic cell by National University, developing (5 kW) grid-connected inverter
Conclusions
Malaysia has a strong potential to build large scale solar power due to its location at the equatorial region. The continuous supply of sunlight, silent in operation, low maintenance cost, independent of fuels source, the environmental friendly factors, and contributions to lower carbon emissions, made solar the best choice for future energy power generation. In Malaysia, more efforts in Research and Development (R&D) on solar energy are required in order to overcome the barriers to enhance the
Acknowledgment
The authors would like to thank Ministry of Higher Education of Malaysia and University of Malaya for providing financial support under the research grant no. UM.C/HIR/MOHE/ENG/D000017-16001.
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2022, Applied EnergyCitation Excerpt :On the other hand, with the continuous progress of production technology, the cost of solar energy utilization products (especially photovoltaic–thermal (PV/T) modules) continues to decline, and the implementation of relevant financial incentives makes solar energy the most widely used in various energy systems [9]. The complementary utilization of solar energy and the ASHP can not only improve the utilization rate of renewable energy and ensure the efficiency and stability of the system [10], it can also produce different types of energy, including heating, domestic hot water and refrigeration, and also possibly the power of photovoltaic cells. At present, the research on SAHP systems mainly focuses on the system form, configuration optimization and operation control.