KOTA KINABALU: The Energy Commission of Sabah (ECoS) announced the implementation of Demand Side Management (DSM) where large power consumers with their own gensets and who participate in the programme would operate their gensets upon instruction by SESB during periods of critical shortage of generation capacity.
This is to reduce the Grid load and subsequently avoid or reduce load shedding to consumers.
ECoS CEO Datuk Ir. Abdul Nasser bin Abdul Wahid said the DSM programme has been implemented as an immediate mitigation measure beginning March 1, this year when the reserve margin dropped below the safe threshold level.
He said the DSM has been activated several times this month due to generator sets at a major power plant are temporarily on outage for planned maintenance that could no longer be postponed.
The outage will continue until end of March, 2024, he said, adding incidents like this are expected to continue until the end of this year due to the low reserve margin caused by lack of generation capacity in the Sabah Grid.
So far, a total of 19 large power consumers have participated in this DSM programme and it has successfully reduced the Grid demand by up to 18MW when activated.
“ECoS and Sabah Electricity Sdn Bhd (SESB) will continue to identify potential consumers for this programme to provide an effective relief to the Sabah Grid system peak.
“Consumers who participate in this programme would be given compensation for the use of diesel to operate their generating sets during the DSM period. However, manual load shedding may need to be done if the load reduction with DSM is still insufficient,” he said in a statement today.
Subsequently, Nasser urged all consumers to practice energy efficiency and energy conservation which can also help to reduce load shedding, in addition to reducing their electricity bills and carbon emissions.
“An example of efficient use of energy is to set one’s air conditioners at temperatures between 24 to 26 degree Celsius. A temperature change from 20 to 24 degree Celsius will save about 33% of energy,” he said.
He added another measure that can have an effect is to avoid, if possible, the use of high-powered electrical appliances such as water heaters, electric ovens, electric irons, electric kettles and the like during the peak period hours between 10 am to 12 noon, 2 pm to 4 pm and 6 pm to 8 pm on normal working days.
For a guide to smart use of electricity please refer to ECoS website at www.ecos.gov.my.
