10% from renewables? The potential contribution from an HK schools PV installation programme

Hong Kong (HK) is currently assessing its future policy on renewable energy and public consultation indicates greater support for renewable energy than previously envisaged, including “willingness-to-pay” for green electricity and also that the present (1% by 2012, 2% by 2017 and 3% by 2022) targets are too conservative. This paper considers the role of de-centralised energy generation by looking at sector-by-sector energy generation and use, in this paper, schools. In HK, schools are horizontally biased compared with the vertical emphasis of other sectors. This paper assesses the contribution of the extensive photovoltaic (PV) arrays installed on the Ma Wan School to meet 10% of the School's annual electricity demand based on the first four months data and compared with the project inception simulation studies plus the impact of a specially developed Schools Building Energy Management System (BEMS) to raise awareness of energy efficient use in classrooms. The project—jointly funded by the HK Government and the research institute of the local utility, CLP RI,—was the pilot for small-scale grid-connection technical and non-technical issues and also identified the need for specially trained PV installation engineers.