The Singapore military solar farm at Sembawang Air Base
The Singapore military solar farm at Sembawang Air Base opened on 30 January 2026, the first solar farm ever built on a Singapore Armed Forces base. Defence Minister Chan Chun Sing opened it in person. Megawatt peak measures the most power a set of solar panels can produce at once under full sunlight, and it is the unit used throughout this article to describe the size of the installation. Ground mounted panels already generate 13.5 megawatt peak, and a further 4.5 megawatt peak of rooftop panels are planned by the end of 2026, which would bring the site to 18 megawatt peak total. Once finished, the farm is projected to generate enough electricity to power about 4,700 4 room Housing and Development Board flats a year, a common Singapore public housing apartment size, and save the Ministry of Defence about 1,900,000 dollars a year.
Building solar panels next to a helicopter base
Fitting solar panels onto a working military airfield is a harder engineering problem than an ordinary rooftop, because helicopter downwash, the force of air pushed down when a helicopter flies close to the ground, and the risk of glare reaching a pilot are both live safety hazards. To survive helicopter downwash, engineers drilled the screw pile foundations that anchor the panels 20% deeper into the ground than a standard design and fitted an extra stabilizing plate. Glare and structural analyses were carried out before any panel was positioned, to keep sunlight reflections away from pilots.
It was not an easy challenge because, coming from a military background, I know that installing solar panels in an airfield has its own risks and limitations.
Chan Chun Sing, Singapore Minister for Defence, from his speech transcript at the opening of the farm. Source 3.
Chan Chun Sing said he had personally identified airfields years earlier as one of 3 hard places to add more solar power, alongside cemeteries and roads, and that a helicopter base is harder to fit than a fixed wing airfield because approach directions are more varied.
How Sembawang fits into a bigger target
This one farm pushed the combined solar capacity across every Singapore Armed Forces camp and base past 50 megawatt peak, meeting a target the Ministry of Defence set in 2021 for completion by 2025. That 50 megawatt peak figure covers the whole Singapore Armed Forces, not Sembawang Air Base alone, which on its own is 13.5 megawatt peak now and 18 megawatt peak once its rooftop panels are finished. A further 13.5 megawatt peak is planned across other camps and bases by the end of 2027, which would take the Singapore Armed Forces total to 68 megawatt peak across 11 facilities.
The first row is already built and running. The other 2 rows are still planned, one by the end of 2026 and one by the end of 2027
Show the numbers
| Sembawang Air Base, ground mounted, built now | 13.5 |
| Sembawang Air Base, rooftop, planned by end 2026 | 4.5 |
| Other Singapore Armed Forces bases, planned by end 2027 | 13.5 |
The other airfield solar project in Singapore
Sembawang Air Base is only the second airfield solar project in Singapore. The first, a smaller installation at Changi Airport, began construction in early 2025 and is planned to reach 5 megawatt peak by 2026. Once the Sembawang rooftop panels are finished, the planned 18 megawatt peak total at Sembawang will be roughly 3.6 times the size Changi Airport is planned to reach, a MAOWCE calculation from the two totals.
Figures are each project total planned capacity once finished, Sembawang Air Base by the end of 2026 and Changi Airport by 2026
Show the numbers
| Sembawang Air Base | 18 |
| Changi Airport | 5 |
Part of a national energy resilience push
Chan Chun Sing framed the solar farm as part of a wider national effort, not just a saving for the defence budget.
Today's project is also part of a larger national drive for us to strengthen our energy resilience.
Chan Chun Sing, Singapore Minister for Defence, speaking at the opening of the solar farm. Source 1.