Research on solar energy resource assessment and development pathway in Singapore

Abstract

Solar energy is the only renewable energy source likely to be developed on a large scale in Singapore. Singapore has limited land resources. According to the land use, the solar energy exploitable areas can be divided into five categories: rooftop photovoltaic, building surface photovoltaic, land-based photovoltaic, floating photovoltaic and infrastructure photovoltaic. The total development area of each type of photovoltaic is about 3,680 × 10⁴ m². According to the assessment, Singapore has about 968 × 10⁴ kW in 2050, of which distributed solar energy accounted for about 74%. Roof, building and infrastructure photovoltaic mainly adopt distributed development with high cost of per kWh; land-based and floating photovoltaic mainly adopt centralized development with low cost. According to the cost reduction speed and development degree of various kinds of solar energy, two solar energy development paths from 2030 to 2050 are proposed, namely, the full development path and the economic development path. The full development path aims at the full development of solar energy potential, and the economic development path considers the kilowatt-hour cost of solar energy development. The difference between the two paths focuses on the development degree of rooftop photovoltaic and building surface photovoltaic. Under the full development path, the electrification level reaches 61%, 16 percentage points higher compared with the economic development path; the installed renewable energy capacity reaches 51%, 19 percentage points higher compared with the economic development path. On the basis of two solar energy development paths, two 2050 energy scenarios adapted to different solar energy development paths are proposed. Singapore is unable to be carbon neutral in either development path or needs to increase transnational transmission.