Search

The need for cheaper electricity generation rises as the price of fossil fuels is increasingly nowadays. Hydropower plant is one of the most efficient and environmentally friendly alternative power plant sources. In this research works, a prototype of small-scale hydro power plant known as micro hydro power plant (MHPP) was developed for educational and research purpose. The motivation of this work is based on there is no field laboratory could be used for students to study the concept and actively involved in electricity generation at Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) Johor Bahru campus, Malaysia. This work hopefully become the catalyst for further research regarding renewable energy source, particularly in MHPP research. The research flow for this work begins with feasibility activities to determine some potential sites for development of MHPP at UTM Johor Campus. There are 7 (seven) potential sites based on site visits and data analysis. From the data analysis, the most suitable site chosen for MPPP prototype development. The prototype was built based on the improved design. The results show that the constructed prototype is capable for generating electricity. This prototype can be used as a field laboratory and for educational and research purpose.

Lightning surge phenomenon has been recognized as one of a threat to electrical and electronics devices. This event can cause degradation to the devices performance and at high energy can cause the total failure in devices operation. This research work objective is to observe and monitor the effect of lightning surge to electrical devices especially through their power lines and telecommunication lines port. The surge immunity test was conducted using lightning surge simulator to evaluate the immunity of electrical equipment such as multifunction printer, laser fax and integrated telephone systems to ensure them continues reliability operation. Variable voltage values have been injected to electrical devices in an increasing value up to 15 kV or until the devices cannot withstand the voltage and start to degrade, temporary lost function and totally lost function. The devices performance and behavior has been monitored at the normal performance until abnormality performance has been observed and amount of voltage value at that time were recorded for analysis purpose. From this experiment, the high functional devices such as multi-function printer had the lowest immunity to the surge value followed by laser fax and lastly is integrated telephone systems. It was shown that the degradation and damage would occur if there were some narrow coincidence between the phase angle of waveform and superposition of surge. In this case, the frequently occur at phase angle of 90° and 270°, respectively. The results revealed that the worst and high probability for damage to occur towards coupling/decoupling network is at common mode compare to differential mode (L-PE & N-PE).

In Malaysia, fossil fuels are the most frequently used as energy resource. However, the amount of reserves for fossil fuels is now declining. That is why nuclear energy has become more popular for a certain country to diversify its production of energy. The aim of this paper is to analyze the suitability of nuclear power plant (NPP) compared to conventional power plants using a multi-criteria decision-making technique or known as the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). A framework of AHP’s hierarchy is being developed, and the hierarchy structure consists of six criteria, namely safety and security, resources, public acceptance, cost of energy, construction time, and CO 2 emission, respectively. Other than that, three alternatives, namely NPP, thermal power plant and hydropower plant, are also considered in the hierarchy structure. By using AHP technique, the system reveals that the hydropower plant is the most favourable choice of a better power plant compared with others. The results obtained demonstrate the validity of the framework developed.

Sarawak is largest states in Malaysia and is gifted with lush forest and hilly terrains. However, due to this topography, Sarawak Energy Berhad (SEB) has difficulty to supply a reliable source of electricity to all areas of Sarawak. There are even areas with grid connection that occasionally suffer from power outage. Solar energy can be seen as a solution to the problem of supplying reliable power. However, installing and operating a PV system to generate power will require some insight on the location and the technical information of the PV system. Therefore, this paper aims to collect and analyze the resource data of the locations in Sarawak as well as the possible characteristics of a grid-connected PV system. The project starts with the possible locations of the PV system. The locations include area throughout Sarawak such as Sri Aman, Kapit, Limbang, Lundu, Sebuyau, Tatau and Lawas, respectively. The resource data of the area such as the average annual irradiance and the average annual ambient temperature is collected through HOMER software. The components used to test the characteristics of the PV system are CanadianSolar KuBlack C32K 300MS solar panel, Mitsubishi Electric PV-MLU250HC solar panel, Canadian Solar Single Phase String Inverter CSI- 2KTL1P-GI-FL and Mitsubishi Electric Photovoltaic Inverter PV-S2600, respectively. Then, the components will interchange into a combination of one PV module and one inverter to make four different sets of PV system. The result of the project revealed that the area of Limbang and Lawas is the most suitable for a Grid-connected PV system because the two areas have high irradiance and low ambient temperature. The most suitable combination of components is the Mitsubishi Electric PV-MLU250HC solar panel and CanadianSolar Single Phase String Inverter CSI-2KTL1P-GI-FL. This combination component has the least loss which means the PV system is efficient.

In the past few decade, longhouse communities in the rural area of Sarawak has been experienced the limitation of electricity supplies. Due to geographic of Sarawak, supply electricity to these rural areas from utility grid through transmission lines also will only results in many losses, the initiation of utilize solar as prime sources is favourable solution. The implementation of DC microgrid system for this area will achieved, as the solar PV system is a DC source to generate electrical supply for appliances in longhouse communities. However, the tropical climate and geographical in Sarawak such as the inconsistent solar radiation, changing temperatures, high humidity and heavy rainfall will be the main restrain to implement solar DC microgrid system. Thus, this paper proposes a comprehensive study about the voltage distribution of DC microgrid configuration in order to investigate system the reliability and efficiency. The configuration of DC micro-grid model has been designed using MATLAB Simulink and an experimental presenting the Simulink also has been developed for validation purposes. The obtained simulation and experimental results confirm that the proposed configuration of the ring system with multiple-sources is more reliable and efficient than radial system with multiple-source configuration in terms of DC voltage distribution at different buses. Thus, the proposed configuration is more reliable according to voltage distribution at each buses.

In past few years, there has been a huge concern about decentralized electricity supply in Sarawak, Malaysia. Renewable energy resources can be seen as an alternative energy to capture the remote rural electrification’s problems. Installing and operating a renewable energy generation is not difficult but it requires cautious step as to make sure maximum use of energy can improve the electrification. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to critically analyze five types of optimized hybrid renewable energy systems in term of financial and power production using HOMER software. This paper approaches four renewable energy resources, namely solar, hydro, wind and biomass in three remote rural areas located in Limbang, Kapit and Sri Aman regions. Different combination of solar PV system, micro-hydro generator, wind turbine and biomass generator together with battery storage and converter were studied. The optimization between these different sizes of system was built based on energy demand satisfaction, system cost and carbon gas emission. Comparison between operational of behaviors hybrid renewable energy systems with stand-alone diesel generator only were also carried out to elucidate the effects on investment cost and environment. The results revealed that hybrid hydro with battery system is seen to be the cheapest system and has the best technical performance in all locations. Solar PV and biomass generator system were combined with hydro generator as a backup power. It is also found that hybrid renewable energy is more cost-effective and reduce of carbon emission compared to standalone diesel generator.

Solid waste is predominantly domestic garbage and can be either solid or semisolid. It does not include industrial or hazardous wastes. Energy recovery from garbage is not a new idea globally but the method of determining the energy content of the waste stream has developed over the period. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a tool used to determine the environmental impact, of any product from its raw material (cradle) stage to finally being discarded (grave) as a waste deposit. For a complete LCA, scenarios have to be created which will aid the study by comparing results of activities with the base case scenario. The aim of this study are to cconduct a study for waste to energy (WTE) technology, harnessing household garbage for educational purpose and to create an LCA models to show the environmental impact on various scenarios. In this study, two scenarios were created, namely the base case scenario and energy recovery scenario, respectively. In the base case scenario, all the waste generated is taken to landfill, while in the energy recovery scenario, energy and material recovery is involved. All scenarios are based on a Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) case study. From the result of the LCA, about 12 MW of electricity can be recovered by harnessing the garbage in UTM, with associated high decrease in environmental emissions from 5 tons of CO2 and 390 kg of deposited goods at the landfills to -0.97 tons of CO2 and no deposited goods. This is because materials can be recovered from the waste thatcan be recycled. GabiTM software was used for the LCA assessment.