Solar energy

Nanotechnology in Harnessing Solar Energy

Solar Panels Installation by end 2018 and Batteries (1000KW) by end 2019

The solar panels project took off in 2018. The objectives of installing the solar panel are below:

  1. Energy Savings via Renewable Energy
  2. Towards Self-Sustainability
  3. Reduction of CO2 Emission
  4. Educational Platform for Students
  5. R&D Platform for Researchers

Malaysia enjoys an average of 4 to 6 hours of effective sunlight. As such, solar panels will help reduce the maximum demand for power consumption during the day. The University as invested over RM2 million with a payback of 6 years. The capacity of the solar system based on the simulation using the PVSyst for Sunway University is 600kWp.

Project Targets:
To reduce the dependency from Tenaga National Berhad, for the electricity supply and to be self-sustainable in the future;

The targeted building to use the solar energy is the South Building as their tariff per kWh is range between 0.43 to 0.509 cents. As such, there should be minimal use of electricity for the South Building.

Energy Saving Method


Major Findings

  • Reduces energy consumption in the day time.
  • Effective Sunlight is between 4 to 6 hours
  • No Saving in MD charges without Battery Storage.


Locations for Solar PV System (Blue spaces)

The solar panels are installed on the University Building and the North Building rooftops.

Batteries 1000KW will be brought in 2 stages in 2019. The campus requires 3500 KW TNB Usage. As such, these batteries will allow us to save further on energy consumption. We hope to achive 11 million Ringgit savings in 30 years.

In 2019, the Sunway Group had 1% of the total energy consumption generated from solar energy and in 2020, this increased to 3% (7,408 MWh), which is the target the Group had set last year. The education group consumed a total of 963 MWh solar energy from these solar panel installations.