The population of the 10 countries generally grouped under the Southeast Asia designation – Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam – presently stands at 625 million. Some 100 million people live in the 10 largest metropolitan agglomerations. Another 125 million have either no access at all or very sporadic, unsatisfactory access to electricity. Off-grid microgrids will increasingly become the key energy infrastructure to address the need for better and more affordable energy access in the region.

To support the further development of microgrids in Southeast Asia, NTU is leading the Renewable Energy Integration Demonstrator – Singapore (REIDS) project, which will be the largest hybrid microgrid test and research platform in the tropics. REIDS is strongly supported by the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB) and the National Environment Agency (NEA). The S$ multi-million microgrid infrastructure is intended to facilitate the development and market penetration of the energy technologies, suited for tropical conditions, to be developed by NTU together with a consortium of world leading corporations, the “REIDS partners”. REIDS and its partners are testing and demonstrating the integration of solar, wind, tidal, diesel, storage as well as waste-to-energy and power-to-gas technologies as well as other production, storage, end-use technologies and solutions suitable for deployment in Southeast Asia.

REIDS is paving the way towards sustainable multi-activity off-grid communities. REIDS fosters systemic research and development in the broad energy arena in support of Singapore’s corporate and public entities as well as stakeholders in Southeast Asia, thereby strengthening their position within the rapidly growing renewable energy and microgrids markets.