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Indonesia to surpass the Philippines as world’s 2nd largest geothermal producer

Indonesia to surpass the Philippines as world’s 2nd largest geothermal producer Unit 1 of Sarulla Geothermal Power Plant, North Sumatra/ Indonesia (source: Ormat Technologies)
Alexander Richter 12 Sep 2017

Indonesia expects to surpass the Philippines in the rankings of the top geothermal power producers in the world as early as next year and become the largest geothermal country by 2021.

With ongoing geothermal development and 345 MW of geothermal power generation capacity to come online next year, Indonesia is soon to overtake the Philippines as the second largest geothermal electricity producer int he world.

Head of Bureau of Communications, Public Information Service, and Cooperation at Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources Dadan Kusdiana said this projection can be seen with the growing installed capacity of Geothermal Power Plant (GPP) which keeps increasing rapidly from year to year.

“Based on our analysis, Indonesia’s geothermal capacity will beat the world’s largest geothermal power producers, the United States and the Philippines by 2021,” Dadan said in Jakarta.

Next year, Indonesia will surpass the Philippines to become the world’s second largest geothermal energy user in the world by generating geothermal electricity of 2,023.5 megawatts (MW) through the addition of capacities from Sarulla Geothermal Power Plant (2 x 110 MW), Karaha Geothermal Plant (30 MW), Sorik Marapi Geothermal Plant (2 x 20 MW) and Lumut Balai Geothermal Plant (55 MW).

Based on the constructed roadmap, Indonesia will become the world’s largest geothermal energy producing country to defeat the United States in 2021 with geothermal electricity capacity reaching 3,559.5 MW.

Currently, the utilization of geothermal energy for the purposes of new power generation is 1,698.5 MW or about 10 percent of the existing reserves.

In fact, as many as 331 geothermal potential locations that have spread in the territory of Indonesia are very strategic for investments and meet national energy needs in accordance with the National Energy Policy (KEN).

“We have 17,506 MW of geothermal reserves and 11,073 MW of resources but have not been optimized, so it is an opportunity for investors as well as to meet the national energy needs,” said Dadan.

Source: NetralNews