Electricity supplier Tenaga Malaysia moving into smart cities

Last week board member Paul Budde presented at the Futures Cities Conference in Kuala Lumpur on the topic of smart cities and smart grids. He also referred to the work that GSGF has been doing and our involvement in all of this:

“According to Malaysia’s main energy provider, Tenaga National Behad (TNB), the topic of smart grid has well and truly moved in the direction of smart cities. To this end the company has positioned itself as a key infrastructure provider in the smart city developments of that country. Energy will be a key element in this development but in order to become an important player in the smart city market TNB understands it will have to broaden its approach towards energy, and offer a more complete set of smart city products and services.

It has also researched the key sectors in the smart city such as healthcare, transportation, culture and entertainment, telecommunications, security, building management, etc, and has come to the conclusion that specific services will have to be developed for each of those sectors.

This will necessitate the company making some fundamental changes to the organisation and the way it operates, and this certainly will not be an easy task. But, as is happening elsewhere, TNB is facing reduction in traditional power supply and it will have to make a choice – whether to remain the largest player in a shrinking market or move into new services. Obviously it will need to be realistic about this and concentrate on areas that lie within its competence. One of the areas it is looking at is whether its smart meters can be used for other applications, and if it can collaborate with partners to broaden their use.

It is looking at different business models. They have developed three main models, simply operate on a project basis for third parties, a build operate and transfer (BOT) model and a build-operate and manage (BOM) solutions.”