SARAWAK can start exporting electricity to Sabah in 2022 at the earliest, Sarawak Energy Bhd (SEB) chief executive officer Sharbini Suhaili said today.

The state energy company said it would have to wait until Sarawak’s two northernmost districts – Limbang and Lawas – are connected to the main grid.

Limbang and Lawas are cut off from the Sarawak grid by Brunei Darussalam. They get their power supply from diesel generators.

SEB chairman Hamed Sepawi had last year said that the company was losing RM100 a year in diesel subsidies for its consumers in the two districts.

Diesel energy costs RM1 per kilowatt per hour (KWh) but consumers only pay 28 sen per KWh.

Hamed had compared it to the cost of hydro-electricity, which cost less than 20 sen per KWh.

“We can only export when the northern agenda is completed,” Sharbini said at SEB’s annual business update to the media in Kuching today.

He was referring to SEB’s ongoing project to erect transmission lines from Miri to Limbang and from Limbang to Lawas. These lines will skirt the Brunei border.

Exporting energy to Sabah would edge Sarawak closer to becoming the “power house of Borneo”, he added.

Once the necessary agreements are in place, SEB can start making connections from Lawas to Sipitang in Sabah. The final draft power purchase agreement is still with the Sabah government, Sharbini said.

Sabah has so far agreed to buy 50MW but this “could go up to 300MW”, he added.

Brunei has also expressed interest in purchasing 30MW of Sarawak’s excess power, Sharbini said.

Export to Brunei could commence sooner than to Sabah because basic infrastructure is already in place. An additional 10km transmission line from Tudan in Miri to the Brunei border could be erected quickly, he said.

“The connection is there. Our substation is ready. It (the transmission line) is very short,” he said.

Officials from Brunei and Sarawak are meeting to work on the principal agreement, he added.

The Borneo grid was build in January 2016 when Sarawak started exporting 230MW of electricity to West Kalimantan via a 275KV transmission line connecting Mambong in Sarawak to Bengkayang in West Kalimantan. – June 26, 2019.