Energy-efficient desalination: Improving energy efficiency by 40 percent in a Singaporean desalination plant
The island state of Singapore has historically struggled to provide enough drinking water. Today, demand is up to 430 million gallons per day. To address the water shortage in Singapore, the country is investing in advanced technologies.
A key piece of this strategy came online in 2021: the Keppel Marina East Desalination Plant (KMEDP), a dual-mode plant that processes seawater and reservoir water into clean drinking water. This plant alone provides 30 million gallons of water every day, serving seven percent of Singapore’s demand.
Desalination will play an increasing role in Singapore’s water supply, reaching 30 percent of demand by 2060. However, desalination is energy intensive. To ensure that Singapore can meet its Long-Term Low-Emissions Development Strategy (LEDS) – ultimately achieving net zero emissions by 2050 – the country must invest in energy-efficient desalination.
Powerful pumps are used throughout the Keppel Marina facility, including to draw water from either its reservoir or the ocean, depending on recent rainfall. The operator identified that the motors which power these pumps are an ideal opportunity to improve the plant’s energy efficiency.

Following a joint analysis with ABB, experts determined that the plant could reduce its total energy consumption by 40 percent by switching to more energy-efficient motors, adding variable speed drives (VSDs) and switchgear, and optimizing processes.
As a further benefit of these upgrades, operators have access to detailed, real-time data from throughout the energy-efficient desalination plant. They can also control it from a unified command center with the user-friendly ABB Ability™ System 800xA distributed control system. This improves the quality of operational processes and maximizes uptime, ensuring the consistent supply of desalinated water Singapore needs.

Singapore’s Public Utilities Board (PUB) has awarded KMEDP a gold certification, and it was named “Desalination Plant of the Year” at the Global Water Awards in 2021.
“ABB has decades of experience in creating integrated solutions for desalination plants worldwide, and ABB’s products and systems are found in all of Singapore’s water plants in one way or another. We are proud to be a part of Singapore’s water story as we continue to develop our long-standing relationship with PUB,” said JianYuan Ling, ABB’s Energy Industries Division Manager in Singapore.
