Indonesian Anantara Joins the List of Singapore’s Renewable Energy Suppliers

Indonesia based Anantara Energy Holdings Pte Ltd, a new JV between local solar power producer Quantum Power Asia and German renewable energy firm ib vogt GmbH, plans to export electricity to Singapore.

The JV will see an investment to the tune of USD 5 billion (EUR 4.64bn) in the project, building a solar park of over 3.5 GW on Indonesia’s Riau Islands. The project will deliver a 4TWh of renewable energy to Singapore, annually. On its completion, the Riau islands will have a total solar installation of over more than 4,000 hectares. The joint venture is dubbed Anantara Energy Holdings Pte Ltd. Singapore’s homegrown electricity retailer Union Power Pte Ltd (Union Power) has been appointed as distribution partner.

As per the partners of JV, the solar and storage project would be capable of generating more than 3.5GW and storing 12GWh of renewable energy. The transportation of energy to Singapore will be via an undersea cable. Furthermore, upon the project’s completion in 2032, it will cover approximately 8% of Singapore’s annual electricity needs.

Furthermore, the project has the potential to bring up to $5 billion of capital into Indonesia from Singapore. This will create more than 30,000 jobs, according to QPA Managing Director and CEO Simon G. Bell.

The Riau islands also contain the Bintan island, where Singapore has taken large tracts of land on long term lease and developed multiple industries and other facilities.

Plans to Fruition

In 2021, Singapore announced plans to import up to 4GW of clean energy by 2035 to diversify supply and boost energy security. This , even as Singapore’s own ability to generate renewable energy is limited, unless it reverses a long term block on any nuclear energy installations.  This accounts for about 30 per cent of the island city-state’s total supply. Interestingly, the island city-state looks to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050.

At Singapore Energy Week in October last year, trade and industry minister Gan Kim Yong declared the plans of issuing two requests for proposals (RFP) for the 4GW of electricity imports – one in November 2021 and another one in the second quarter of 2022. Anantara project, thus, responded to the November RFP.

Last year, Indonesia’s Directorate General of New, Renewable Energy, and Energy Conservation and the Danish Energy Agency published a study suggesting some renewable goals. It called for building 2.38 GW of solar capacity in 2022, targeting 6.7 GW of new projects by 2025, and 14.9 GW by 2030. Hence, the JV may fulfil the 2022 target in one go. However, this won’t be serving Indonesia’s renewable energy transition needs but will help to achieve Singapore’s energy targets.

Singapore’s Union Energy Corp. (UEC) has also partnered with the Anantara project to distribute the electricity to residential, industrial and commercial customers.

Singapore Mounting Solar Energy

The Anantara project is not the first mega-scale PV project to import solar energy to Singapore via undersea cables. There’s another Australia-Asia PowerLink (AAPowerLink) project.

AAPowerLink is an intercontinental renewable energy generation and transmission project that will supply green electricity from Australia to Singapore, by way of Indonesia. The project will deliver power generated from the world’s biggest solar farm and battery storage facility, to be built in the Northern Territory, Australia, to Darwin, Australia, and then on to Singapore through overhead and undersea cables.

The AAPowerLink project involves an investment of A$30bn ($22.54bn). The project will cover 12,000ha of land and may begin its construction in 2023. As per the schedule, the electricity transmission to Darwin and Singapore will commence in 2026 and 2027, respectively. Further, the project is expected to reach full capacity in 2028. The AAPowerLink project includes a solar farm with a capacity ranging between 17GW and 20GW. It will also have a battery energy storage system with a capacity between 36GWh and 42GWh. The project will also boast a 5,000km-long high-voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission system. This will include an 800km-long overhead line to Darwin and a 4,200km undersea cable system from Darwin to Singapore. It will supply approximately 3.2GW of dispatchable electricity a year to Singapore.

Earlier, UAE state-owned renewables company, Masdar, also signed a deal in January 2021 with Singapore’s Tuas Power, French energy group EDF, and Indonesian state-owned utility PT Indonesia Power to explore the development of 1.2 GW of solar and a potential storage facility in Indonesia for export to Singapore.

Currently, Singapore generates approximately 95 per cent of its electricity from natural gas