IPEC on a Mission to Myanmar
19 / 07 / 19
Business
The mission, supported by the UK Government’s Energy Catalyst programme aims to help UK companies learn about the challenges for Myanmar’s energy network, and find partners to work on applying innovative solutions to solve them.
The Energy Catalyst programme was set up in 2013 and enables Myanmar to commercialise sustainable energy solutions faster than they normally would. Energy sustainability is based on three pillars of the energy trilemma – low cost, low carbon and secure supply. In 2019, the Energy Catalyst programme was awarded £36.6m from the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) for two rounds of the Energy Catalyst programme. It is focused on meeting the needs of poor households, businesses and services in Sub-Saharan Africa or South Asia.
Access to electricity in Myanmar has slowly increased in recent years, from 34% of the population in 2015-16 to 40% in 2018. The Myanmarese government are currently investing in this area and hope to address the rising demand for power consumption through a combined focus on traditional and renewable energy sources. Through the government’s National Electrification Plan (NEP) and the Myanmar Energy Master Plan (MEMP), they aim to achieve 47% sustainable power by 2020, 76% by 2025 and 100% by 2030.
As experts in On-line partial discharge testing of MV and HV plants, IPEC’s proposition within the Energy Catalyst programme is to apply our existing technology to reduce power loss and waste within Myanmar’s energy network, with the aim of satisfying the growing reliability needs of the country.
