TO attract more foreign investments and businesses especially in the electrical and electronics industries to operate in Malaysia, the Technical Working Group on Getting Electricity (TWGGE) was formed under the Pasukan Petugas Khas Pemudahcara Perniagaan (Pemudah) to spearhead initiatives to improve the business environment.
Established as a public-private sector collaboration, the TWGGE is chaired by Energy Commission chief executive officer Abdul Razib Dawood and co-chaired by Electrical and Electronics Productivity Nexus champion Datuk Seri Wong Siew Hai, who is a member of Pemudah.
In the recent World Bank Doing Business 2020 report, Malaysia managed to improve its ranking in the Getting Electricity category from 60th position in 2011 to fourth in 2019.
Although there has been a significant increase in Malaysia’s ranking, there’s still an important issue that needs to be resolved.
As highlighted by the Energy Commission’s survey, it states that semiconductor plants experience the highest number of losses in production value due to voltage sag.
Voltage sag occurs when there is a drop in voltage, and it recovers to its normal level after one second or less.
This affects semiconductor plants as it causes a temporary halt in their production line, resulting in loss of time and money.
Since voltage sag is unavoidable in the power system, continuous improvement efforts are required to mitigate this incident.
“In light of this, Intel, one of Malaysia’s largest investors urged TWGGE to evaluate the standards and performance in the US where Intel’s journey in improving power quality through collaboration with the utility service provider was a success and it sets a standard for their operations around the world, ” said Wong.
“So in July 2019, TWGGE representatives went on a fact-finding mission to the US for benchmarking the best practices in power quality improvements at Intel’s Phoenix, Arizona and Portland, Oregon sites. Both site visits were accompanied by Salt River Project and Port General Electric utility companies, ” he added.
“The best practices in power quality management shall be embarked by all parties to ensure minimum disruption to production lines, ” said Energy Commission chief executive officer Abdul Razib Dawood.
In addition, Abdul Razib stated that “from the benchmark, TWGGE decided to establish a Power Quality (PQ) Taskforce – a pilot project with Intel Corporation to improve the service performance of power quality. The outcome of the PQ Taskforce has yielded good results as there were zero disruptions for the past seven months.”
These initiatives are not only implemented for Intel but also carried out for other locations as well.
“In order to support the nation’s economic growth, the best practices in power quality management shall be embarked by all parties to ensure minimum disruption to production lines and in turn, it will boost the product manufacturing and sales, ” said Abdul Razib.
For more information, visit http://www.mpc.gov.my/.
