Last night I was coming back from Tesco Ampang using MRR II and onto Seremban Highway. Luckily the traffic was excellent which I assume everybody was out of the city to celebrate Deepavali. I decided to stop by Petronas Solaris which is also known as the Twin Stations because they share the same infrastructure with two major highways for reasons I believe is, cost saving and convenience.
Usually when talking about oil and gas related industries, we tend to think more about how rich they are and how they are the opposite of being green. Petronas and together with Tan Chong Group and GE(General Electric) are doing the opposite. This is actually the only green architecture I’ve seen before with my own eyes. The building was designed to be more as efficient as possible and self sustaining by using renewable energy around it together with the natural resources. Not to mention, the place gives the ‘futuristic’ feel which reminds me The Town Of Eureka in the popular Syfy show, Eureka.
Here you can see, YES! It is an Electric Vehicle(EV) rapid charging station. I’ve inspected this station closely and it seems that it can only be used if you have an RFID access card. I guess they are not giving electricity for free here. They only have one of this charging station for the one heading to Seremban. The instructions was clearly visible on the station itself. It says that you will need to first verify your RFID card then connect your car to the station using a special charging cable. After it stops charging, you will need to swipe your card again before removing the cables. I guess this is to ‘de-authorize’ and stop all charging activity otherwise, people can use to charge something else using your account.
The educational poster says that by using EV, you can save up to 70% off your petrol spending and 50% off maintenance cost since EV does not require complicated maintenances such as engine oil, spark plugs, air filters, transmission fluids and that sort of stuff. The only problem now is that EV are too expensive for average consumers since imported cars are already expensive in Malaysia. I think the Malaysian government should launch an initiative to reduce tax for electric vehicles and further develop our local car, Proton. The potential of EV is too great of a loss for Proton not getting involved soon. However, there are words that Proton will release their first commercially available, national electric vehicles by 2014.
One of the most significant initiative to reduce energy consumption is LED lighting. LED is known for it’s high luminescence but low power consumption efficiency. I myself have two LED bulbs at home. One is for my room and another one is in the dining area.
LED lights have longer life compared to traditional florescent lighting. They are expected to last for almost 100,000 hours which sums up to 22 years of operation. Savings are estimated to be around 80% compared to florescent bulbs because LED does not heat up as much which translates into less heat as waste.
LED lighting solutions might be expensive now because of it is on the early phase of penetrating the consumer market but the saving returns are worth it. Cuts about 90% off your electricity bills for lighting purposes according to the wattage differences since LED have more illumination to power ratio.
This is where the real renewable energy takes place. The station uses solar energy to power certain equipments such as the coffee machine and other appliances. What’s more interesting is that the extra power collected from the sun will be fed back into the main power grid. Given the idea, the station is actually selling back extra energy that it has to the electric company, further reducing their monthly electricity bills. The solar panes was told to be able to generate 200 kilowatts of electricity per hour.
Water are recycled from rain water instead of feeding from the main water supply pipe. The water however are not used for cooking and consumption. Rather, it was used to supply water to the toilet and cleaning purposes where water does not have to be pure as you need it for consumption. After all, toilets are the main area that uses a lot of water. More savings there folks!
If you are a fan on nitrogen-pumped tyres or want to try it out, you could just come to this station as they provide nitrogen air pumps. The charge per usage is RM 10 for cars and RM 5 for motorcycles. The benefit of using nitrogen instead of normal air is that nitrogen are lighter. Lighter means less fuel consumption; savings for you 🙂 Plus, nitrogen tyres usually last longer and so does the tyre pressure as it is doesn’t really change much when heated up – that is when you’re driving on a long journey and your tyres heat up.
If you are on the way, do drop by to this Petronas Twin Station(Solaris) which can be accessed by using the North-South highway heading towards Seremban. The station can also be access by using Lebuhraya Sg. Besi on KM 0,7. The station is not visible on Google Maps but it is at around this coordinates [3° 0.291′, 101° 43.564′] which as you can see clearly, it is located in between two major highways which makes it possible to become a twin station.
There are a lot of major F&B outlets including KFC, Starbucks, Subway and many more!
My wish for this kind of station is that these stations can become a benchmark for future development for the green industry. Not only it benefits the planet but also the company behind it by getting to save more and more by using less energy and recycling. Green architecture are now I must say, very expensive. This station cost about 20 million Ringgits to complete. Green technologies are on the phase of infancy. Hopefully sooner, these green solutions will become common and widely available to attract more investors to give back to mother nature; bringing the peace of nature together with modern architecture.
Signing off, Aminpro
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