How a Kluang palm oil mill cleared RSPO Principle 5 and trimmed Maximum Demand charges with Huawei SUN2000 + Trina Vertex N
tCO₂ offset annually
“Trexon designed the system around our shift roster and steriliser load peaks. FusionSolar gives us a live dashboard for our RSPO audit trail — the auditors were genuinely impressed. We'd been talking about solar for three years; the ATAP export rate finally made the numbers work.”
A RSPO-certified palm oil mill in Kluang, Johor was facing a double squeeze. On one side, TNB's E2 medium-voltage tariff had climbed to RM 0.457 per kWh for energy consumption, with Maximum Demand (MD) charges piling on an additional RM 30.30 per kW per month during peak sterilisation cycles. On the other side, the mill's European and Japanese buyers had begun requiring verifiable Scope 2 emissions data as part of RSPO Principle & Criteria 5 compliance. The sustainability committee had investigated solar three times over five years but found the economics marginal under the old NEM 2.0 rules.
The situation changed with Malaysia's Solar Accelerated Transition Action Programme (ATAP), gazetted under GP/ST/No.60/2025 and effective 1 January 2026. Under ATAP, excess solar generation is exported to TNB at the Displaced Cost rate — a transparent, predictable tariff that materially improved the financial model for large commercial-industrial systems. When the plant manager ran fresh numbers in late 2025, the payback period dropped below five years for the first time.
Trexon's engineering team conducted a two-day site survey in October 2025. The mill's main processing shed offered 8,400 m² of corrugated metal roofing, but the structural loading analysis revealed that two older bays could carry no more than 12 kg/m² of additional dead load. This ruled out heavier glass-glass bifacial panels in those zones and informed the panel selection.
The steriliser load profile was the critical design input. A palm oil mill's power demand is highly cyclical: steriliser cages draw 600–800 kW for 90-minute cycles, then drop sharply. The solar system needed to be sized so that its output during peak generation hours (10:00–14:30) overlapped with the mill's highest-consumption window, shaving both energy consumption charges and, where possible, Maximum Demand registration.
After modelling twelve months of TNB billing data and local irradiance records from the Kluang Meteorological Station, Trexon recommended a 1,200 kWp rooftop array using Trina Solar Vertex N 580W bifacial panels on the structural bays and lightweight monofacial panels on the older sections. Twelve Huawei SUN2000-100KTL-M1 string inverters (100 kW each) were selected for their smart IV-curve diagnosis capability and native integration with Huawei's FusionSolar cloud monitoring platform.
The final system comprised 2,070 Trina Vertex N 580W panels arranged in 23 strings per inverter, connected to 12 Huawei SUN2000-100KTL-M1 units mounted on galvanised steel structures along the shed's internal purlins. Cable management ran through dedicated PVC conduit trays to a new centralised AC panel room, separate from the mill's existing HV switchgear to satisfy TNB's grid-connection requirements.
Grid-tie application was filed under ATAP NEM 3.0 in November 2025. Trexon's in-house TNB liaison team managed the Connection Agreement and Meter Installation Notice processes, achieving grid-energisation in March 2026 — within four months of contract signing, a timeline the plant manager described as "faster than we expected given the scale."
The FusionSolar SmartLogger 3000 connects all 12 inverters to the Huawei cloud platform. Real-time generation data, specific yield by string, fault alerts, and cumulative CO₂ savings are accessible via web dashboard and mobile app. The RSPO audit team was provided read-only dashboard credentials during the mill's annual P&C audit in April 2026.
Pre-commissioning tests included thermographic scanning of all module strings, IV-curve tracing on a 10% random sample, and insulation resistance testing to IEC 62446 standards. TNB's inspection team attended the live commissioning, verified metering configuration, and signed off the grid-protection relay settings within one site visit — a smooth process Trexon attributes to having prepared a complete IEC 62109-compliant technical dossier in advance.
During the first month of operation (March 2026), the system generated 1,312 MWh — a specific yield of 1,093 kWh/kWp, consistent with the P50 design estimate of 1,080 kWh/kWp/year for Kluang's irradiance zone.
Financial performance after two months of full operation (March–April 2026):
Environmental performance:
The system displaces approximately 1,800 tonnes of CO₂ equivalent per year, calculated using Malaysia's grid emission factor of 0.694 kg CO₂/kWh (Suruhanjaya Tenaga, 2024). This figure is now cited in the mill's RSPO Principle & Criteria 7.2 annual report as documented evidence of Scope 2 emissions reduction — the first year the mill has been able to provide a third-party-verifiable figure rather than an estimate.
RSPO compliance:
Under RSPO P&C 2018 Criterion 7.2, operations are required to identify, monitor, and manage greenhouse gas emissions and demonstrate year-on-year improvement. The FusionSolar dashboard provides auditor-ready monthly generation reports, cumulative CO₂ savings with methodology reference, and ISO 50001-aligned energy performance indicators. The mill's 2026 RSPO audit confirmed the system as a qualifying Scope 2 mitigation measure.
The plant manager shortlisted three contractors. Trexon was selected for three reasons: (1) the only bidder to provide a full structural loading analysis with PE-stamped drawings rather than a generic rooftop walkthrough; (2) native Huawei FusionSolar integration with direct RSPO audit trail export; (3) in-house TNB NEM 3.0 / ATAP application experience that avoided the six-month delays the mill had heard about from peers who used contractors without grid-connection expertise.
Note: Financial figures represent indicative modelling based on Trexon installation data and TNB E2 tariff schedules. Specific client details are anonymised per B2B confidentiality.
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