EMA awards grants, announces grant call, new partnership in clean energy transition efforts

THE Energy Market Authority (EMA) on Friday (Jul 15) announced grant awards under existing partnerships, a grant call, and a new partnership that are expected to advance Singapore's energy sector and energy transition.

In separate press statements, EMA said local startups and projects were awarded grants under its partnerships with energy player Shell and government agency JTC.

Deep tech NUS spin-off BeeX and deep cleantech company SunGreenH2 were the 2 local startups to be awarded grants under an S$8 million EMA-Shell startup partnership supported by Enterprise Singapore (EnterpriseSG).

BeeX designs and builds autonomous equipment that could potentially be employed for remote monitoring and inspection of underwater energy infrastructure, such as subsea cables and floating solar photovoltaic systems. This would reduce the need for less safe, efficient and effective manual inspections.

The startup will be collaborating with Shell in its pilot project to trial a hovering autonomous underwater vehicle at the Shell Energy and Chemicals Park Singapore on Pulau Bukom.

SunGreenH2 has the potential to improve the efficiency and cost effectiveness of producing low-carbon hydrogen with its proprietary electrolyser technology, providing a clean renewable energy source.

Under a S$6 million grant, EMA and JTC, with support from EnterpriseSG, will be supporting 3 projects by Keppel Energy Nexus, Tuas Power and EDF HQ Singapore, and VFlowTech.

The new clean energy innovations will be test-bedded on Jurong Island and, if commercially viable, could be scaled up and deployed across more companies on the island as well as other industrial companies looking for cleaner energy solutions.

The projects include innovative floating solar deployment and the development of a virtual ledger system to support green hydrogen production, EMA said.

One of the projects will look at using existing infrastructure to deploy energy storage systems and the electrolytes used for energy storage can be produced from recycled industrial waste, which enhances circularity on Jurong Island.

EMA is also seeking more projects in next-generation energy technologies. Together with the Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT), it announced a second grant call seeking innovative solutions to manage increasing distributed energy resources (DERs) while ensuring continued grid stability and reliability.

Funds from the S$20 million Exploiting Distributed Generation programme launched in 2019 will be used to develop the projects.

DERs such as photovoltaic installations and the rise in adoption of electric vehicles mean that power systems of the future will need to be flexible and responsive, and Singapore's power grid must adapt, they said.

Successful grant applicants can expect to test-bed their solutions on SIT's Multi-Energy Microgrid at its Punggol campus, located in the heart of the Punggol Digital District when it is ready in 2024.

SIT on Friday also inked a memorandum of understanding with SP Group to upskill and reskill SP's employees. This will start with putting a pioneer cohort of employees through a 3-year undergraduate degree at the university.

This article first appeared in Business Times