Sunseap brochure - August 2017

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Sunseap: Bringing sustainability to Asia

Sunseap: Bringing sustainability to Asia Written by: Nell Walker Produced by: Mariana Lee 3

With green energy company Sunseap rapidly expanding across Asia, Lawrence Wu, Director and Co-Founder of the business, explains how this has been achieved with technological prowess and a devotion to customer need

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s Singapore’s biggest and best-established clean energy provider, Sunseap dominates the industry with its innovative projects, the work it does with its strategic partners, and a holistic view of the energy business.

A licensed power wholesaler and retailer, Sunseap prides itself on maintaining excellent relationships with customers, taking the way they operate into account when working on a project, and doing everything possible to allow that customer to be as energy efficient as possible.

In addition to corporate clients, such customers will soon include homeowners in public housing estates. This additional string to the company’s bow will undoubtedly

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prove useful as the business expands.

When the business was established, it was to fulfil a need in the market identified by Lawrence Wu, Director of Sunseap, and his Co-Founder Frank Phuan. While the latter had at least two decades of solar panel manufacturing experience behind him, Wu himself had been in mergers and acquisitions, and the combination of that expertise proved ideal to start an energy business.

Singapore was sorely lacking in green energy solutions at that time, and many other countries were striding ahead with wind, hydro, and solar energy. Power is also not subsidised in Singapore, so Wu and Phuan came together to look at the financial implications of creating

Lawrence Wu

Director & Co-Founder Lawrence Wu co-founded Sunseap Group, currently Singapore’s largest clean energy provider. Sunseap Group functions as a utility company that specialises in clean energy solutions that include its Solar Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) model, clean energy supply and solar-hybrid systems. Wu is the co-founder and Managing Director of Thirdrock ISSEA Advisers Pte Ltd, a corporate finance firm specialising in mergers & acquisitions, as well as strategic capital raising in Southeast Asia. He is also a Director and Partner of TRIREC Pte Ltd, a renewable energy investment firm that focuses on projects and companies in sustainability and de-carbonisation. Wu has more than 16 years of experience in investment banking, specialising in M&A and restructurings, reverse takeovers, schemes of arrangements and delisting of public companies.

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ABB inverters such as the TRIO-TM also offer the industry’s highest oversizing capability. Oversizing adding more PV panels per inverter - minimizes your total inverters required, saving system costs.

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ABB’s digital inverters add value as your solar PV system’s “CPU”.

Inverter technologies have advanced greatly in the past few years, giving increasing control and monitoring capabilities to optimize solar plant operations. That is why inverters are often compared to the central processing unit (CPU) of a computer. But while other inverters are just beginning to offer such functionality as optional add-ons, ABB’s flagship inverters such as the TRIO-TM and UNO-DM are ahead of the curve with embedded wireless webservers. This allows overthe-air updates, remote cloud diagnostics and compatibility, ensuring your system is welloptimized for consistent running uptime, and future interoperability.

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a viable business model and the is nominal and the service boasts infrastructure required to sell clean many advantages. Aside from the energy at competitive rates. obvious positive impact on the “In the early days it was challenging environment, using Sunseap for because the costs of solar, wind, and power means that businesses can hydro energy were so high,” explains be guaranteed a consistent source Wu. “It was very difficult – but not of energy for 10, 20, or 30 years. impossible – to sell it at a realistic “The weakness of solar power price. But what we had going for is that it requires high capital us was a very sound legal expenditure initially,” says framework which allows Wu, “but the strength is the financing committee that the ongoing cost to look at our projects is next to nothing. and fund them at a That allows us reasonable rate. to effectively “It also helps underwrite the that Singapore is cost of power over Number of employees at a tropical country, a long period of Sunseap so solar power time – we’re talking especially is considered 20 or 30 years. We can more stable than in a lot of offer a price for your energy countries. The other benefit we today and it will stay the same for the have is that the local market adopts next three decades. With coal, oil, a non-subsidy approach to power. or gas, you have one or two years Whether you are generating brown, of stability and you can’t promise black, or green power – everybody the client anything beyond that.” gets charged the same.”

This pricing structure allows Projects Sunseap to really push its green This reliability is a big part of what’s energy services, as the cost difference drawing customers to Sunseap.

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SUNSEAP The company has signed a 25-year contract with Apple; the technology giant approached Sunseap to fully power its Singapore operations with 100% solar power, creating a lengthy partnership that sees Sunseap supply solar power directly to Apple.

Providing this degree of power for such a long period of time is also reliant on technological skill – another attractive strength for Sunseap. While once the maximum capacity for power generation with a single connection point on a single rooftop was 1 megawatt-peak (MWp), Sunseap can now achieve the same at an increased 10 MWp. The company also participated in Singapore’s first floating photovoltaic (PV) project testbed at Tengeh Reservoir, with a floating PV system of 200 kilowatt-peak (kWp), and is also working towards solar energy storage solution with batteries to provide a complete off-grid service.

Sunseap’s evolution As Sunseap has long hit upon the right formula for its business, the future sees it continuing its current business models. It prides itself on

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only producing the kind of quality products it would use itself, and solidify itself as a full-fledged utility company.

“We started as a regular solar company, but now we are ready to supply a variety of services,” Wu says. “We can supply the power you need to you in more than one variety, be it solar or conventional energy. As our business emphasises integrated solutions, we also pay

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attention to the demands and needs of our clients. For example, we’ll advise our customers on areas such as office lights - LED lightings, upgrading or retrofitting the office’s facilities including ventilation. Any area that helps them conserve energy and in the process, save money.

“It only makes sense to create extra value for our clients when we’ve a 20-year relationship with them.

Instead of charging the client anything up front for additional services, we would propose them to give their energy savings to us. If a customer saves £1,500 a year, they can share that with us over the next five years to build more solar projects and help us form a close alliance.”

Sunseap’s services are set to expand yet further as of next year. While it is a licensed retailer, the business

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can currently only sell its power to corporate and industrial entities; In 2018, with the liberalisation of the electricity market, the regulations will change, and residents will be able to buy Sunseap’s products, extending the company’s reach. As such, later this year, Sunseap will start pitching its green energy products to individuals as well as businesses.

A unique service So far in Singapore, Sunseap has installed its solar systems atop around 1,800 buildings, and has put together a robust data monitoring system capable of tracking the performance of all its solar systems.

It is effectively running its own weather station, and plans to roll out the same monitoring system in every new market it enters.

“Our business requires us to ensure we fix any issue promptly, and we are able to do that by tracking the health and performance of our system around the clock,” Wu says.

This is just one of the ways Sunseap differentiates itself from competitors, but the heart of what

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Frank Phuan Co-Founder

makes the business different is the way it approaches the market and handles its customer relationships.

“For us, we take pride in delivering the highest quality in our products and services. It is a crucial part of the business, as much as optimising the balance between that quality and the cost. The performance of our systems directly influence the return on our assets. This reason alone is why the choice of our equipment is so vital – on the one hand we don’t go for standard stuff because the cost at times wouldn’t be financially feasible, but on the other, we don’t compromise quality with cheap parts because our solar systems need to operate for a long time.

“What we end up with is a very selective choice of manufacturers and suppliers, and all our investors are well-trusted. That mind-set is

unique, because our competitors are mostly financially driven, so they would go for the lowest cost.

There’s a huge reliance on what’s cheapest and what will give the highest returns. As important a factor cost is, our technical knowledge tells us that should not be the only factor of consideration. The focus of our business is to ensure the equipment produces the optimal amount of solar power consistently.”

This attitude will continue to serve Sunseap well as it expands. It is currently completing Cambodia’s first solar project, as well as continuing to expand into Malaysia, and new projects are being commissioned in Thailand, the Philippines, and Vietnam. Sunseap truly is a force to be reckoned with, making Asia greener one nation at a time.

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SUNSEAP Tradehub 21, 18 Boon Lay Way, Singapore 609966 T: +65 6602 8086 | E: enquiries@sunseap.com www.sunseap.com