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Indonesia maintains ambitious 2025 geothermal development goal of 9,500 MW

Indonesia maintains ambitious 2025 geothermal development goal of 9,500 MW Kamojang geothermal plant, Indonesia (source: ThinkGeoEnergy, creative commons)
Alexander Richter 9 Jan 2017

Indonesia maintains the ambitious 9,500 MW geothermal power generation capacity goal to be reached by 2025. This would mean adding 1,000 MW/ year, which might be somewhat unrealistic.

Visiting the Kamojang geothermal area this week, Indonesia’s Deputy Minister for Energy and Mineral Resources (ESDM) Arcandra Tahar said that it is still hopeful to reach the goal of 9,500 MW in geothermal power generation capacity in Indonesia by 2025. With an installed capacity of currently 1,450 MW, this seems to be a rather ambitious goal and would need adding 1,000 MW per year from today until 2025.

With the stable supply of power and its baseload capacity, geothermal energy is seen as a superior form of energy much in demand in the country.

In a statement Arcandra Tahar said that “the challenge in the development of geothermal power is competitiveness of the geothermal power price. The production cost of geothermal power is high making it less competitive in price facing power produced from other facility such as, gas, oil and coal fired power plants.”

Meanwhile, Operation Director of PGE, Ali Mundakir said by the end of 2016, the installed capacity of PGE was 537 MW electricity equivalent. Four of 14 Geothermal Working Area (WKP), have been in operation by PGE. They are Kamojang Area in West Java, Sibayak in North Sumatra, Lahendong in North Sulawesi, and Ulubelu in Lampung.

Five other WKP are operated by its partners including Sarulla in North Sumatra, Gunung Salak, Darajat, Wayang Windu, all three in West Java and Bedugul in Bali, Ali said.

He said the Kamojang Area is the first WKP in Indonesia producing geothermal power. It started commercial operation with PLTP Monoblok built in 1987 with a capacity of 250 kWe officially commissioned by then Mining and Energy Minister Subroto. Commercial operation of the PLTP in Kamojang started in 1983 with Kamojang Unit-1 coming on line (30 MW), followed by Unit-2 and Unit-3 in 1987 each with a capacity of 55 MW.

“The three units of PLTP are owned by Indonesia Power (IP), a subsidiary of PLN. PGE, therefore, sold geothermal steam to IP,” Ali said. The Unit – 4 of PLTP Kamojang came on line in 2008 with a capacity of 60 MW and PLTP Unit-5 in 2015 with a capacity of 35 MW.

PGE handled the jobs from explorations to development of the field as well as the construction and operation of the power plants. “The output in electricity is sold to PLN which deals with the end users,” Ali said.

Altogether the total installed capacity of the Kamojang Area is 235 MW electricity equivalent, supplied to the high voltage 150 KV cabel of the Java-Madura-Bali interconnection.

Source: Easy Branches