Human Writes: We are paying for electricity that we don't use

Even as the world is moving away from burning coal to produce electricity, Malaysia has been increasing imports of coal. — Filepic/The Star

Psst, Malaysia, wanna save more than a billion ringgit a year? We surely need to save money what with the government’s debts and liabilities rising to record highs due in part to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Every year, folks, we lose at least RM1.2bil in energy industry deals, observers say. We have way too many power plants. Our capacity to generate power (which we pay for) is way more than the maximum power used (peak demand) – a difference known as the “reserve margin”. The 2021 margin is set to be 48%, says a report by an energy planning body in the Energy and Natural Resources Ministry (specifically, the Planning and Implementation Committee for Electricity Supply and Tariffs, known as JPPPET, its Malay acronym).