People picnic on the green roof of Marina Barrage in Singapore on Oct 10, 2022. (ROSLAN RAHMAN / AFP)

SINGAPORE – Singapore's Second Minister for Trade and Industry Tan See Leng said on Wednesday that SembCorp is installing a 200-megawatt (MW) Energy Storage System (ESS) on Singapore's Jurong Island, which will be operational by November this year.

"This is the largest ESS deployment in Southeast Asia," Tan told the second Singapore-IRENA High-Level Forum at the Singapore International Energy Week. "This project will support our efforts to enhance grid reliability and also maximize solar deployment in Singapore."

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According to a statement from Singapore's Energy Market Authority (EMA), the authority appointed Sembcorp Industries to build, own and operate 200MW/200MWh of ESS to enhance the resilience of the country's energy supply and power grid in June.

Energy Storage System can be used to store energy to provide reserves to the power grid when needed, freeing up power generation plants to generate more electricity to meet demand

The ESS is currently being installed across two sites on Jurong Island and spans 2 hectares of land. When operational next month, it will be the largest ESS deployment in Southeast Asia, and one of the fastest of its size to be deployed.

EMA said ESS functions as large-scale batteries to store energy and dispense it at other times when needed to maintain grid reliability. The fast-response nature of ESS also allows it to actively manage mismatches in electricity supply and demand, and perform regulation services to address second-to-second fluctuations in the power grid, which can mitigate the impact of solar intermittency.

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In view of the ongoing volatility in the global energy market, ESS can be used to store energy to provide reserves to the power grid when needed, freeing up power generation plants to generate more electricity to meet demand, the authority said.

It added that the ESS will use lithium iron phosphate batteries, of which the technology is a proven, safe and high-performing method of renewable energy storage widely used worldwide.

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