There are currently no incentives given to residential households to invest in and use solar energy. The transition to solar power is administered by SP Group, whose interest might not be aligned to households. 

SP takes many weeks to approve each solar system installed before the household can use solar power. In the meantime, all the solar power is lost while waiting for SP’s approval. 

SP buys unused solar power from households at 20 cents per kWh and resells it immediately for 27.74 cents per kWh.

The Renewable Energy Certificate (REC) is set at a minimum 10,000kWh of solar power resold into its grid per year before a household can get an REC. 

Each REC is worth around $30. The minimum REC per household is set so high that most households with solar power cannot get the REC.

The Government must encourage households that are able to transition to solar energy to do so. It must put in place rules to prevent profit-driven entities from benefiting from those who make the effort to transition to clean energy. 

Since the Government does not provide any form of incentive for this transition, it should at the minimum make SP charge households net energy used from the grid instead of the current gross charging system.

Approval for turning on of a solar energy system must be done within five working days. If SP is unable to meet this service standard, then some penalties should be imposed.

We must make maximum effort to have solar power generated within Singapore, as buying renewable energy from other countries comes with a host of issues and can become problematic, like the experience with our water supply.  

Christopher Leong