Malaysian act seeks to allow citizens to sell energy

Malaysia’s  feed-in-tariff mechanism  will enable individuals to earn income by selling electricity generated from renewable resources at home.

Under the RE Act, the public will be able to sell electricity generated from RE to utility companies such as Tenaga Nasional Bhd and Sarawak Energy Berhad at a fixed rate for a specific period.

RE/Malaysia Building Integrated Photovoltaic Technology Application national project team leader and chief technical adviser Ahmad Hadri Haris said that under the RE Act, consumers can install their own renewable resources such as solar panel at home and would be a secondary income for consumers.

“Consumer producing 4KW of electricity at home will be earning more than RM400 a month. It will be a secondary income generator,” he said.

Ahmad said consumers would also be able to offset potential tariff hike by setting up RE such as solar panels at home.

He said two Acts would need to be passed in parliament for the RE to take off in the country. The first RE Act would focus on RE while the second act was to empower the Sustainable Energy Development Authority, which will oversee the implementation of RE.

It is part of the Government’s plan to boost renewable energy contribution to Malaysia’s electricity-generation mix from less than 1% in 2009 to around 5.5% by 2015 and to 11% of all electricity generated nationwide in 2020.