Revisiting solar photovoltaic roadmap of tropical Malaysia: past, present and future

Environmental issues and economic factors such as emission of Greenhouse Gases (GHGs), fossil fuel depletion and fluctuation of oil prices are also the reason behind the utilization of sunlight as a source of energy. Even though with the spread of unprecedented pandemic of COVID 19, the industry of solar photovoltaic (PV) is surviving at a very promising rate compared to the oil industry. Malaysia has a high potential to be successful at harnessing solar energy as this country is located within the equatorial region. The government of Malaysia (GoM) introduced various policies, acts and incentives programs for the purpose of increasing this country’s potential to harness solar energy. Along with the efforts, goals and aims have also been set as a benchmark to measure Malaysia’s success in utilizing sunlight as an energy source. This study reviews the roadmap programs executed by GoM to elucidate the significant roles played in the development of solar PV starting from a few pilot projects in1980s until present. The roadmap focuses on incentive programs namely Feed-in Tariff (FiT), Net Energy Metering (NEM), Self-Consumption Scheme (SELCO), Large Solar Scale (LSS), Supply Agreement with Renewable Energy (SARE) and ‘Peer-to-Peer’ (P2P), which complement all the projects and solar PV applications in Malaysia. The contributing result of this roadmap is the highlights on the continuous solar PV programs stimulated by GoM, the identification and effort to improve the less performing GoM incentive programs combined with the positive responses from communities and industries, have laid a strong platform to forecast a promising future of solar PV industry in Malaysia.