SINGAPORE - Tertiary students will be given a behind-the-scenes look at energy facilities here, such as an underground district cooling network, under new educational visits launched by the Energy Market Authority on Wednesday (Oct 26).

The aim of visiting such facilities, normally not open to the public, is to bring engineering and energy concepts to life for students, allow them to mingle with industry practitioners and interest the students in working in the power sector.

On one such visit on Wednesday, students from various tertiary institutions, such as the Institute of Technical Education (ITE) and Ngee Ann Polytechnic took a tour around the Singapore District Cooling Plant at Marina Bay.

The educational visits, dubbed the Powering Lives Trails, are designed to cover different aspects of the power sector.

There will be five trails, also called "learning journeys" for the following facilities:

- The Liquified Natural Gas Terminal on Jurong Island, where gas to power Singapore is imported.

- The Sembcorp Cogen @ Banyan plant on Jurong Island, which generates electricity for the national grid and produces steam for industrial companies on Jurong Island.

- The Pulau Ubin Micro-grid Test-bed, which assesses the reliability of electricity supply in a micro-grid set-up using intermittent renewable energy sources such as solar energy.

- EMA's Power System Control Centre, where students can learn about the challenges of managing the nerve centre of Singapore's power system at the centre.

- The Singapore District Cooling Plant at Marina Bay, said to be the world's largest underground district cooling system, which keeps buildings cool at the Marina Bay business district.