Indonesia to Add 16.7 Giga Watt from New, Renewable Energy
MINISTRY OF ENERGY AND MINERAL RESOURCES
REPUBLIC OF INDONESIA
PRESS RELEASE
NUMBER: 287.Pers/04/SJI/2020
Date: 24 September 2020
Indonesia to Add 16.7 Giga Watt from New, Renewable Energy
The government through the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources (EMR) is committed to promoting the development of clean energy-based power plants in the national energy supply in the future. The government has planned to add 16.7 Giga Watt (GW) in the next 10 years as set out in PLN's Electricity Supply Business Plan (RUPTL) of 2019-2028.
"There are several challenges in the development of new, renewable energy power plants," said Minister of EMR Arifin Tasrif at PLN's International Conference on Technology and Policy in Electric Power and Energy 2020 held online on Wednesday (23/9).
According to Mr. Tasrif, the first challenge lies in the economies of scale of renewables, currently considered less competitive than the fossil fuels. "The electricity prices from renewables power plants are relatively more expensive than those from conventional power plants," he said.
Second, renewables plants such as solar or wind plants have an intermittent nature, so power grids must be put on standby to maintain continuity of electricity supply.
On the contrary, renewables plants with low operation costs and a high capacity factor such as hydro, mini hydro, and geothermal power plants are usually located in conservation areas far from load centers and need a relatively long time to develop due to a number of reasons, for example licensing procedures, geographical constraints, and force majeure (landslides).
Finally, Mr. Tasrif said, in terms of bioenergy, the development of biomass and biogas plants needs a guaranteed supply of feedstocks during the plants' operation.
The minister believes that as a tropical country, Indonesia is very suitable and has great potential in renewables development, especially from the use of solar energy. Indonesia receives a higher amount of solar radiation than other countries.
"It is very possible (to rely on solar energy), because Indonesia is a tropical country. Solar radiation is higher than in other countries," he explained.
Positive Trends in Renewables Plants
Mr. Tasrif did not deny the fact that coal still made up a large portion in power plants' fuels. "Until June 2020, coal still dominated the realization of energy mix for electricity generation," he said.
Still, the capacity of renewables power plants has been on the increase and even exceeded the government's target that is set in the 2020 State Budget. Significant movement has been shown by hydro and geothermal-based power plants.
The capacity of geothermal power plants has reached 5.84% or 2.131 Giga Watt Hour (GWh), above target of 4.94% (14.77 GWh). Meanwhile, the realization of hydro power plants reached 8.04% or 6.857 GWh, higher than target of 6.23% (18.63 GWh). Next, the realization of other renewables reached 3.24 GWh or 0.29%, exceeding the set target of 1.01 GWh.
The share of gas generators reached 17.81% or equivalent to 175,119 British Billion Thermal Units (BBTU), while the share of Oil Fuels and Biofuels generators reached 3.75%, consisting of 0.86 million kiloliters of oil fuels and 0.29 million kiloliters of biofuels. "The total realized production of electricity is 133,216 GWh," Minister of EMR concluded. (IY)
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