Smart Grid Initiatives in South East Asian Countries : What Are Being Done in The Early Stage

Factors such as the increasing complexity of power grid; state-of-the-art operation and information technology; more complex behavior and characteristics of customers' loads; the unstoppable demands of better quality, reliability, and efficiency of electricity; and the growing development of renewable energy sources have become challenges for power utilities to build and implement smarter grids. Several countries in Europe and United States answered these challenges by deploying projects towards Smart Grid, in which various different key initiatives were introduced in the initial phase in different countries with different power grid structures and problems. In the same sense, South East Asian countries have also carried out key initiatives to tackle challenges mentioned above. This paper is intended to give insights on the smart grid key initiatives taken by each utility under HAPUA, especially in the distribution system. All data presented here were gathered first hand from all utilities under Head of ASEAN Power Utilities/Authorities (HAPUA). Subsequently, a table of commonness of key initiatives was created to find out which initiatives became the most selected ones. Based on the table of commonness, it appears that AMI, AMR, and SCADA were the most common key initiatives taken by the majority.