On the 2nd November 2010, our team gave an oral presentation about selection of alternative energy sources in Malaysia. Here are the contents of our presentation.
ALTERNATIVE ENERGY SOLUTION IN MALAYSIA
GROUP MEMBERS:
• AHMAD HAFIZ RAHIM (ME 078934)
• MUHAMAD FIRDAUS ZAHRI (ME 079059)
• NORHIDAYAH ZAKARIA (EE 079967)
• NOOR FAIZAH ZAINUL ABIDIN (EE 078845)
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WHY DO WE NEED ALTERNATIVE SOURCE?
“If we are to meet future demand with current solutions, namely coal and gas plants, I do not think it can meet demand by 2021”. Said by TNB president and chief executive officer Datuk Seri Che Khalib Mohamad Noh.
We need an energy solution that can tackle all bellow in one go
- Global Warming
- Depleting Crude & Coal Resources
- Fluctuating Price of Crude & Coal
WHAT ARE THE ALTERNATIVES THAT WE HAVE?
PREFERED ALTERNATIVES : RENEWABLE ENERGY
TIDAL & WAVES: Tidal and waves energy in Malaysia is too small to harvest considering average value per year.
The average available wave power is in the region of 1.0 to 12.0 kW/m depending upon the season, with the higher wave power occur during the northeast monsoon season.
WIND: Studies done in Malaysia indicated that only a few places in the East Coast have sufficient wind energy for utilization on a small scale of 10kW.
The average wind speed over the sea surface around the sea surrounding Malaysia is generally below 5 m/s.
GEOTHERMAL: Malaysia is not on top of an active tectonic activity and hence we have too little geothermal, Tawau has an electricity generation potential of up to 67 MW from geothermal resources following the discovery of a geothermal site in Apas - under the 9th Malaysia Plan the government had allocated RM1.5 million for research on the site.
HYDRO: Micro hydropowers are based on run-of- the-river systems ranging up to 50 kW. Micro means small scale thus empowers only up to 20 houses in the rural areas.
Hydro power plant on a large scale usually diverts multiple streams to a damn thus this takes up a lot of land space and disturbs the natural ecosystem.
BIOMASS: The type of biomass material includes residues from palm oil, rice mills and wood mills.
Biomass power plant runs at an efficiency lower than 50%. In fact biomass releases carbon to the atmosphere but it is consider as part of the natural carbon cycle and hence can be considered as RE.
SOLAR: Is the most potential RE in Malaysia but currently the cost to energy produced ratio is too small. Meaning that currently it is far too expensive even for a small scale application of 50KW. The best photovoltaic solar panels using polycrystalline at its best have an efficiency of less than 35% without considering system losses due to inverter, mismatch, solar irradiance, dirt, and tilt angle.
OTHER ALTERNATIVES?
Smart + sustainable + Save cost + Safe = Nuclear solution
Nuclear energy can be produce even by fission or fusion. Advantages of fusion compared to fission are its radioactive by-products are much shorter-lived. The second advantage to fusion energy is its theoretically massive power output. Our sun is the best example of fusion. Its potential is promising. Then why don’t we abandon nuclear fission and focus on fusion? Because the basics of fusion is closely related to fission, which is the process used in a nuclear reactor. Furthermore the technology does not exists yet.
CONCLUSION
Nevertheless RE might dominate the world in the future but by observing the trend; it might be another 150 years to come. But obviously we need to move aggressively in nuclear power plant to tackle today’s problem.
Some people also considers nuclear power plant as RE because it emits nothing to the atmosphere but RE pro claimed that as it takes up large land area (1km2for 1000MW) which interrupt the ecosystem (similar to Hydro power plant) plus nuclear waste plus limited recycling cycle of depleted fuels, plus finite uranium sources, its existence in the RE family had been denied by people who are bias more towards RE.
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