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Indonesia pushing plans for rural electrification

Indonesia pushing plans for rural electrification Tea plantation at Gunung Mas, West Java, Indonesia (source: flickr/ micha.hb, creative commons)
Alexander Richter 30 Apr 2016

The Indonesian government is pushing plans for a larger scale electrification program for rural areas, where small scale geothermal could play an important role.

The government of Indonesia is pushing forward with plans to electrify rural areas of the country using new and renewable energy.

The planned use of new and renewable energy is part of the countrys electrification program called “Indonesia Terang” (Bright Indonesia).

Renewable energy is expected to help cover 23 percent of the governments target to produce 35 thousand megawatts (MW) of electricity by 2019.

Currently, 12,659 of 74,754 villages in Indonesia are still without electricity and 65 percent of them are in six provinces in eastern Indonesia.

Therefore, the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resource is prioritizing the development of power infrastructure in six eastern provinces through the “Indonesia Terang” Program or PIT.

With its Indonesia Terang program, the government has a target to provide electricity for 10,300 villages until 2019, or about 97.35 percent of the countrys electrification ratio.

Minister of Energy and Mineral Resource Sudirman Said stated in West Papua on Friday (April 22) that the six provinces where electrification ratio is too low currently, are Maluku, North Maluku, East Nusa Tenggara (NTT), West Nusa Tenggara (NTB), Papua and West Papua.

“We have allocated Rp441 billion ($34 million) to produce 9.4 megawatt of electricity in those six provinces,” the minister said.

The electricity infrastructure in these regions will have to be built through different approaches, such as decentralization and island-based infrastructure as well as by harnessing the renewable energy potential there.

The government estimated that at least Rp100 trillion ($7.6 billion) of investment is needed to develop infrastructure under this program, 80 percent of which will be funded by the corporation while the rest will come from the State Budget.

Last month, Sudirman said power for rural areas would be generated from renewable energy sources for electrifying remote and isolated areas, islands or frontier areas.

With its geothermal resources, smaller scale geothermal plants could play an incredibly important role as part of the electrification of rural areas outside of largely populated regions.

To learn more about the country’s plans see link below.

Source: Antara News