Malaysia renewable energy feed in tariffs

Malaysia has a renewable energy feed in tariff, available to solar PV, biogas, biomass, small hydro and geothermal projects.  The rates are fairly good, particularly for PV, and they’ve also outlined various bonus amounts that apply if the generator meets certain criteria.  They’re clearly trying to promote the use of certain fuels (landfill gas and solid waste) and they’re incentivising local content.

Oversight of the tariffs is managed by the Sustainable Energy Development Authority Malaysia (SEDA) and there’s a lot of information there as to what progress has been made in renewables.

The table below provides an outline of the current feed in tariffs and bonus tariffs available to renewable energy projects.

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(MYR:USD rate as at the 26th August 2015)

“Key terminologies in FiT:

Distribution Licensees: Companies holding the licence to distribute electricity (e.g. TNB, SESB, NUR). Feed-in Approval Holder: An individual or company who holds a feed-in approval certificate issued by SEDA Malaysia.  The holder is eligible to sell renewable energy at the FiT rate. FiT rate: Fixed premium rate payable for each unit of renewable energy sold to Distribution Licensees. The FiT rate differs for different renewable resources and installed capacities. Bonus FiT rate applies when the criteria for bonus conditions are met. Indigenous: Renewable resources must be from within Malaysia and are not imported from other countries. Duration: Period of which the renewable electricity could be sold to distribution licensees and paid with the FiT rate. The duration is based on the characteristics of the renewable resources and technologies. The duration is 16 years for biomass and biogas resources, and 21 years for small hydropower and solar photovoltaic technologies.”

For more information, visit http://seda.gov.my/

Since 2012, 325.82MW of renewable energy capacity has been installed with nearly 570MW in the pipeline.  To give some context, in 2014 the total installed capacity in Malaysia was 29GW.

Most of the installed capacity is from solar PV installations (206MW).  There’s also over 70MW of biomass capacity installed and they are ramping up their landfill gas installations too.

In 2014, renewables accounted for 485GWh of energy generated, broken down as per the graph below.  Total electricity consumption in 2014 was 116,353GWh, so total installed capacity is contributing less than 0.5% at present.  I’ll be looking a bit more into Malaysia’s energy picture while I’m here.  Watch this space.