Figure 1: Global Economy Growth trajectory in relation to Technology advancements Source: Disruptive technologies: Advances that will transform life, business and the global economy, McKinsey Global Institute, May 2013, [ Ref. 1 ]
of“ flexibility” and“ smartness” embedded in them in order to accommodate the variability and uncertainty in electricity demand-generation balance due to the anticipated substantial growth of renewable variable generation( VG), principally solar photovoltaic( PV) resources. Wind power resources in Malaysia are small and insignificant compared with solar PV.
Electricity Demand-Generation Balance and National Energy Security
In the Ingenieur publication, Vol. 60, Oct-Dec 2014, themed“ Managing Energy Resources”, the author in his Policy Paper“ Electricity Demand-Generation Balance: The Question of National Energy Security”, [ Ref. 2 ], put forth to the Government the case that the future national energy policy must necessarily address the electricity demandgeneration balance as part of its national energy security agenda. The overarching national energy policy depends on the ability to secure primary fuels( a mix of gas, coal and possibly nuclear) for the development and operation of centralised large-scale electricity generating stations and the associated high-voltage transmission and distribution power grid.
Power system planners and operators who have been working with conventional electricity power grid systems with centralised large-scale fossil-fuelled power plants are familiar with a certain amount of variability and uncertainty, particularly with regards to system demand. For example: depending on the season and weather conditions, demand can fluctuate significantly over a single day, week, or month. In the Malaysian power system grid, the extensive use of electricity for air-conditioning creates a relationship between increase in electricity demand with increase in temperature which amounts to close to 1000 MW per degree centigrade rise. In addition to meeting these variability requirements, there is always some inherent uncertainty about future power
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