The city state is aiming to install panels on more than 1,200 public housing blocks of flats under the fourth phase of its national rooftop solar initiative.

Singaporean solar developer Sunseap says it has secured an SG$85.8 million (US$63.6 million) green loan from two domestic banks for a PV rooftop program the company described as the “largest green energy project in Singapore to date.”

The fourth phase of the government tendered SolarNova plan will involve the installation of solar panels on more than 1,200 public housing blocks and 49 government sites, Sunseap announced this morning.

The developer won the tender in 2019 and began installation last year. Sunseap described the fourth phase of SolarNova as having a total generation capacity of 70 MWp and “potentially, up to 102 MWp.”

The developer has already secured a “virtual power purchase agreement” with social media platform Facebook for the latter to purchase the renewable energy credits which will be generated by any SolarNova 4 clean energy which is fed into the Singaporean grid because it is not needed at the generation sites.

The green loan has been secured from two Singaporean lenders, who will supply the credit on a 50/50 basis: the United Overseas Bank Ltd whose controlling shareholder is the Temasek Holdings sovereign wealth fund, and DBS Bank.

With DBS' Joyce Tee, quoted in the Sunseap press release, describing SolarNova 4 as “one of Singapore's most ambitious solar projects to date,” the developer said its rooftop panels would generate almost 97 GWh, enough to power 20,400, four room public housing apartments.

The overall SolarNova program, Sunseap said, is being led by government departments the Housing Development Block (HDB) and the Economic Development Board, with the HDB having committed to install 330 MWp of solar generation capacity on 6,901 housing blocks en route to 540 MWp this decade.

The Singapore government has pledged to achieve peak greenhouse gas emissions this decade, to halve that ceiling figure by 2050, and to have a net zero economy “‘as soon as viable' in the second half of the century,” Sunseap stated.