Sunseap CEO Frank Phuan gains additional muscle to develop solar power in Singapore and beyond
Sunseap’s much-anticipated initial public offering this year did not happen, but CEO Frank Phuan comes to this interview with game-changing news. The world’s fourth largest renewable energy producer EDP Renewables (EDPR) has just bought a massive slice of the home-grown solar energy company in a deal valuing Sunseap at SG$1.1 billion.
With access to the technology, expertise and financial resources of a global firm worth US$28 billion, Sunseap can take on larger, more complex projects. Not that it doesn’t already have an impressive list of accomplishments. Sunseap’s revenue last year was SG$145.2 million, nearly six times what it was in 2016. On top of developing solar systems in Singapore, it has expanded into Cambodia, China, Japan, Malaysia, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam.
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The most significant milestone in the firm’s history, however, happened this October, when Sunseap announced that it, along with local and international partners, would be developing solar power systems in the Riau Islands, Indonesia. The project would generate the equivalent of 1 gigawatt (GW) of non-intermittent energy that would be piped back to Singapore through subsea power cables. If the Riau Islands project is successful, says Phuan, it will supply 25 per cent of the 4GW of low-carbon electricity imports, as stipulated by the Singapore government, by 2035. “That is substantial,” he stresses. “That’s the needle moving literally.”
The cross-border project allows Singapore to plug into the region for its clean energy needs. The island state itself does not have enough surface area to generate the required power, even if, according to Phuan, “it’s one of the densest solar cities in the world”.
“The desire to keep the start‐up culture will still be there, regardless of how many people we have, how many markets we’re in.”