Where Singapore’s Grid Stood in August 2026

Singapore’s Energy Market Authority (EMA), the statutory board that regulates the country’s electricity and gas markets, will spend up to $5.3 billion expanding the power grid between 2025 and 2029 — eleven times what it spent in the preceding five years — to meet electricity demand that could grow by as much as 51% by 2031, according to EMA’s Five-Year Energy Infrastructure Plan, released on October 26, 2026. The plan details every generation, gas, grid, solar and storage commitment behind that demand curve, but it does not say when, or how, the $5.3 billion shows up on a commercial electricity bill.

As of August 2026, Singapore’s peak electricity demand stood at 8.6 gigawatts (GW), drawn almost entirely — around 95% — from natural gas. EMA’s own projection puts 2031 peak demand at somewhere between 9.9 GW and 13 GW, a range wide enough that the agency attributes it not to households but to “new demand from energy-intensive sectors such as semiconductor manufacturing and data centres,” plus wider adoption of electric vehicles.

September to October: A Tender Closes, a Plan Follows

The plan did not appear in isolation. A Request for Proposal (RFP) for additional natural gas-fired power plants closed in September 2026, and EMA is still evaluating those bids for plants it expects to bring online by 2032. Five separate new gas-fired plants are already committed for 2026 to 2031, which alone would lift Singapore’s generation capacity by around 26%, from roughly 12 GW today. EMA has said it will launch further RFPs over the next five years if demand keeps climbing at this pace — and, separately, is studying whether a new energy cluster at Pulau Tekong could host hydrogen-ready gas plants and a second liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal, on top of the one already planned for Jurong Port.

The Five Years Mapped to 2030 and 2031

The grid-side numbers in the plan are the most specific EMA has published on this scale. Seven new transmission substations are due by 2031, nearly double the four built over the previous five years. The high-voltage transmission cable network is set to grow from about 7,700 kilometres today to roughly 9,100 kilometres by 2030, and EMA is studying more than tripling the length of underground cable tunnels from about 50 kilometres today — infrastructure meant to speed up grid expansion in high-demand areas such as the Tampines Wafer Fab Park.

LNG import capacity is set to rise from 10 million tonnes per annum (Mtpa) to 15 Mtpa once the second terminal at Jurong Port opens by 2030. Solar capacity, at 2.3 gigawatt-peak (GWp) today, is on track for EMA’s existing 3 GWp target by 2030, with a new 4 GWp goal set for 2035. Energy storage is meant to grow nearly threefold, from about 350 megawatt-hours (MWh) today to just over 1 gigawatt-hour (GWh) by 2030. And a second electricity interconnector with Peninsular Malaysia, still in feasibility studies, could add up to 2 GW of import capacity by 2030 — doubling the 1 GW the existing link already allows.

The Line on the Bill That Hasn’t Moved

SP Group, the grid operator that bills Singapore’s electricity consumers on EMA’s behalf, splits every tariff into four components: an energy cost tied to fuel prices and reviewed quarterly; a network cost, paid to SP Group’s regulated subsidiary SP PowerAssets, that recovers the cost of transporting electricity through the grid and is reviewed annually; and two smaller system-operation fees. The 10.4% tariff cut households and businesses saw for the fourth quarter of 2026 sat entirely inside that first component — the one indexed to gas prices two and a half months before each quarter begins. It has nothing to do with grid capital spending.

The network cost is the component built to carry exactly the kind of capital program EMA just announced: a regulated asset base, a permitted rate of return, and a formula that recovers both against a multi-year sales forecast. In an older SP Group breakdown for its smallest low-tension customers, that network charge made up roughly a quarter of the bill — a dated figure, not a confirmed current split, but a sense of the scale involved. EMA’s plan does not say when the $5.3 billion starts entering that calculation, or across how many years the recovery is spread. For a commercial account sizing a multi-year electricity contract, that omission — not the quarterly fuel number that makes headlines — is the figure actually worth chasing down with a retailer or with SP Group directly.

Key takeaways

  • EMA’s October 26, 2026 Five-Year Energy Infrastructure Plan commits Singapore to $5.3 billion in grid spending through 2029, eleven times the prior five-year period, without stating how or when that capital reaches a customer’s network charge.
  • Peak electricity demand could rise as much as 51% by 2031, from 8.6 GW to as high as 13 GW, driven mainly by semiconductor manufacturing and data centres rather than household use.
  • The fuel-indexed energy cost component — the one behind the widely reported 10.4% Q4 2026 tariff cut — is reviewed quarterly and is separate from the annually reviewed network cost that would carry grid-capex recovery.
  • A second Singapore–Malaysia interconnector could double cross-border import capacity to 2 GW by 2030, while a hydrogen-ready energy cluster at Pulau Tekong remains at the feasibility-study stage.
  • A commercial electricity account should ask its retailer or SP Group when this grid investment is expected to enter the regulated network-cost calculation, rather than assume today’s rate trend will hold through a multi-year contract.