PHOTO: TNB Careline

Malaysians will soon find that the days of the national grid being just wires and cables carrying electricity from one place to another such as states, districts and villages will be over only to be replaced by a Smart Grid.

Tenaga Nasional Bhd (TNB)  is now at work commissioning the national grid to become smart, automated and digitally enabled to ensure maximum efficiency, reliability and sustainability. It will also ensure that excess energy from power plants, solar farms or other alternative energy sources can be received and supplied to other power users.

The Smart Grid will be able to communicate between supplier and consumer and allows them to participate in changing demands, make a choice on energy used, conserve energy and reduce overall costs.

Monitors and sensors placed along the Smart Grid will be able to identify faults and inform engineers and crew who can then remotely fix the problems and even by using drones.

It involves integrating the power plants that are both owned by TNB and independent power producers, the solar farms, the rooftop solar power producers and the simple housing units that may all soon be producing their own electricity.

All this electricity is to be harnessed and stored and to be distributed when needed. Besides this customers can form micro grids by disconnecting from the main grid entirely and self-supply their own electricity.

In facing the challenges of the future, TNB has its distribution automation system designed for better customer satisfaction, faster reconnection, less outage and energy cost reduction.

Energy saving is coming with a total of 1.8 million smart meters expected to be installed by the end of this year upped to 9.1 million meters by the year 2027.

Up to 2025, TNB is expected to invest about RM5 billion per annum to modernize the grid.

-THE MALAYSIA VOICE