SINGAPORE (Oct 26): Accelerating the Asean Power Grid requires strong government-to-government cooperation to manage each country’s priorities, said Tenaga Nasional Bhd (KL:TENAGA) president and chief executive officer Datuk Seri Shamsul Ahmad.
From the technical perspective, early steps have been taken to understand the standards and regulations of different power systems across Asean for future harmonisation, Shamsul said during a panel session at the Singapore International Energy Week 2026.
Malaysia already undertakes multiple bilateral electricity trades, including wheeling electricity from Laos to Singapore, as well as supply of electricity by Sarawak to Indonesia, he said. Malaysia also has cross-border electricity trade with Thailand.
“What we need to do is strengthen this [for it to] become better, bigger. And it requires a lot of government-to-government support … to make sure each government knows the [different] priorities.
“Because we can benefit tremendously from connecting various sources of energy available in Asia,” he added.
Asean’s multilateral power grid operation took off in 2022 via the Laos-Thailand-Malaysia-Singapore Power Integration Project to deliver 100MW of hydroelectric power from Laos to Singapore. The deal was renewed for two years early this year after a brief lull.
Countries in Asean have different needs of the Asean Power Grid. While Singapore seeks gigawatts of low-carbon energy, Laos needs exports markets to monetise its large hydropower capacity, and Vietnam’s faster-than-average electricity demand growth requires other generation sources to complement its domestic RE.
In Malaysia, corporations are pushing for solar farm projects to supply Singapore, although the terms have yet to be finalised by the government.
This includes in Malaysia’s southern state of Johor, where companies are planning for as much as 900MW of solar capacity to be available for export to the island-state ahead of any updates to Malaysia’s RE cross-border trading platform Energy Exchange Malaysia (ENEGEM).