On 7th December, I am fortunate enough to
be invited to attend a site visit to a solar farm in Sepang and also a palm oil
mill in Labu which produces biomass and also a test bed for biogas.
I have seen quite a number of the solar farms from the
internet and also television but I have never actually visited the actual one
here in Malaysia. Even though I knew that solar farm produces electric through
the conversion of sunlight into electric, I am still having some perceptions
for example it must be hot at the solar farm with so many mirror-like solar
panel and also the place must be noisy with all the equipment and machinery in
place.
We gathered at KL Sentral as instructed by Sustainable
Energy Development Authority (SEDA) at 8.30am before we depart to our first
stop, which was the solar farm at Sepang. The journey to the solar farm was
pleasant with the screening of “The Inconvenient Truth” documentary in the bus
as a bonus. Such a nostalgic feeling listening to the lecture of Mr. Al Gore as
it was my first ever assignment where I have to summarize the documentary when
I was still studying in the university. Thanks to my lecturer, I got exposed to
the climate change and global warming through this documentary. Not to forget,
kudos to the SEDA’s staffs for screening this documentary in order to instill
the knowledge of climate change to the others in the bus.
After an hour of a rather pleasant journey, finally we
have arrived at our first stop. This solar farm is owned by Fortune 11 Sdn Bhd
which is partly own by SunEdison . The size of this plant is 36 acres in an oil
palm plantation site under lease from Malaysia Airports (Sepang) Sdn Bhd. The
project area is in the Sepang District of Selangor State in Malaysia under the
FiT scheme of the Malaysian FiT Programme 2011.
The installed capacity for this plant is 5MW (can
power up to 2000 houses) and also the solar photovoltaic modules are mounted on
a tracker system that tracks the movement of the sun from sunrise to sunset so
as to maximize the generation from the solar cells. Please see figure 1 for better understanding
of the tracker system.
Figure 1: Solar tracker system, where the solar photovoltaic (PV) modules will
track the movement of the sunlight of a day and will adjust its angle according
to the direction of the sunlight.
What is a solar photovoltaic (PV) system?
Photovoltaic (PV) literally means
“light” and “electric.” Photovoltaic technologies are used to generate solar electricity
by using solar cells packaged in photovoltaic modules.
The most important components of
a PV cell are the two layers of semiconductor material. When sunlight strikes
the PV cell, the solar energy excites electrons that generate an electric
voltage and current. Extremely thin wires running along the top layer of the PV
cell carry these electrons to an electrical circuit.
A photovoltaic module is made of
an assembly of photovoltaic cells wired in series to produce a desired voltage
and current. The PV Cells are encapsulated within glass and/or plastic to
provide protection from the weather. Photovoltaic modules are connected together
to form an array. The array is connected to an inverter which converts the
Direct Current (DC) of the PV modules to Alternating Current (AC). Please see
figure 2 for better understanding.
Figure 2: A typical solar PV system.
Source: http://www.solar-green-wind.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/photovoltaic_solar_panels_installers-3576.jpg
As you can see, more solar
irradiance means more energy can be produced through the solar PV system.
Therefore, with the installation of the tracker system, this project is able to
harvest a more constant solar power compared to other systems. Since the
launching, this project has generated more than 100 working opportunities for
the workers during construction and also 20 direct employments during
operations and maintenance stage. Its
annual generation of about 7615 MWhr of green energy every year has saved about
5254350kg of carbon dioxide gas per year.
After spending an hour on site,
we moved to our second destination in Labu, which is an oil palm mill that
focusing on the development of the biomass and also biogas technology.
The MPOB Palm Oil Mill Technology Center
(POMTEC) was been built in Labu, Negri Sembilan using a grant provided by the
Government to spearhead research on all aspects palm oil milling technology.
The objectives of the mill is
•
to provide a test pad for research and development of the cutting-edge
technologies required for tomorrow’s palm oil mill.
•
to demonstrate the application of new concepts and techniques in palm oil mills
for coping with problems and challenges.
•
to provide training facilities for palm oil mill personnel on all aspects of
new and up-to-date palm oil milling technology.
POMTEC
has carried various testing projects within the plant in order to achieve the
objectives mentioned above for example the trash removal, continuous
sterilisation, plant wide automation, new boiler technology, phenolic pilot
plant, empty fruit bunch processing plant and also new effluent treatment
technology.
With
the new effluent treatment technology in place, the effluent will be sent to
the anaerobic tank digester to facilitate the taping of the biogas for
electrical power generation. Moreover, the already installed tertiary treatment
system would constitute a radically new pond-less effluent treatment system for
palm oil mills with a significantly reduced retention time compared to the
traditional ponding system. In
conclusion, better environmental quality assurance and also the generation of
biogas to produce electric.
And
we got the chance to climb up the digester tank and saw this view…
Imagine
if this green biogas technology can be utilized in all oil palm mills, we will
not need those effluent ponds for the betterment of the environment.
The
trip ended at 6pm on the same day. I would like to thank SEDA for organizing
this trip as it is indeed an eye-opening trip for all. Thank you very much.
