Indonesian electricity monopoly PLN has promised price cuts for subscribers as of Saturday, citing improved operational efficiency and low oil prices.
The state-owned company has set its electricity price for households and small and medium businesses at Rp 1,409.16 (10.22 US cents) per kilowatt-house, down 6.6 percent from the current rate of Rp 1,509.38 per kWh, according to Benny Marbun, PLN’s commercial division head.
State-run construction company Wijaya Karya (Wika) is moving to boost its capital expenditure (capex) by nearly 50 percent from this year’s initial target in the belief that infrastructure projects, particularly power plant projects, will speed up next year after progressing slowly throughout 2015.
President Joko Widodo inaugurated a solar-powered electricity-generating plant in the village of Oeipuah, Central Kupang, East Nusa Tenggara, on Sunday.
“This is the first biggest capacity solar power plant made in Indonesia,” he said after dedicating the 5 MW power project carried out by state-owned company PT LEN.
The president said a similar power plant with an equal ore even bigger capacity would also be carried out in other parts of the Indonesian eastern region.
State utility company PLN week signed earlier this week power purchase agreements and construction contracts with independent producers, paving the way to realize a 35,000-megawatt capacity goal set by the government.
As PLN holds monopoly rights in distributing electricity in Indonesia, all independent power producers need to secure a state utility purchasing contract before they can build a power plant.
The contracts are worth around $20 billion, PLN president director Sofyan Basir said in a recent statement.
Indonesia is the third-largest geothermal energy generator in the world. Tenaris invited geothermal energy operators to the Geothermal Day event in Cilegon on November 5.
Participants were introduced to Tenaris’s consolidated tubular solutions specifically designed to address the challenges in geothermal developments with high reliability and cost efficiency.
The Energy and Mineral Resources Minister Sudirman Said has blamed unfavorable regulations for being the biggest obstacle to the development of clean energy.
Nearly all regulations in the energy sector needed to be adjusted to support clean energy, Sudirman said.
Indonesia plans to spur investment in clean energy with the Bali Clean Energy Forum, to be held in February next year.
“Indonesia will encourage global partnerships on renewable energy funding, technology transfer and human-resources assistance. The three pillars have to be supported by regulatory reform regarding tariffs, permits and the energy mix,” he said during a press conference in Jakarta on Tuesday.
The push to harness geothermal energy could lose steam because of a price standoff between producers and the sole distributor.
State-owned electricity monopoly PLN and Pertamina Geothermal Energy have reached an impasse in renewing their power purchase deal for electricity from PGE’s Kamojang and Lahendong plants.
Combined, the 235-megawatt Kamojang plant, in West Java, and the 60MW Lahendong facility, in North Sulawesi, account for a fifth of Indonesia’s current geothermal production, which PGE sells to PLN at 6.2 and 9.7 cents per kilowatt-hour, respectively.
YTL Power International Bhd is embarking on a US$2.7bil (RM11.6bil) 1,320MW coal-fired power plant project in Cirebon, West Java – its second investment in Indonesia.
The power generation and water/sewage treatment group said its 80% owned unit, PT Tanjung Jati Power Co Ltd, had on Monday signed a restated and amended power purchase agreement (PPA) – originally entered into on April 2, 1997 – with the republic’s national utility firm PT PLN (Persero).
The PPA includes the construction of a 2 x 660MW coal-fired power generating facility and the sale of the facility’s energy and capacity to PLN.
The PPA will be for a term of 30 years expiring 2051, on the 30th anniversary of the anticipated commercial operation date of the plant.
GB Asiatic Ventures Sdn Bhd has partnered with China Machinery Engineering Corp (CMEC) to sign two memorandums of developments with AJ Pharma Holding Sdn Bhd and PT Sriwijaya Utama Energy to undertake projects worth RM9.2bil.
GB Asiatic chief executive officer Datuk Wong Kong Choong said the projects involved building the world’s first halal vaccine and pharmaceutical plant for AJ Pharma with gross development value (GDV) of RM330mil in Bandar Enstek, Negri Sembilan and two coal-fired power plants in south Sumatra, Indonesia, with PT Sriwijaya worth around RM8.82bil.
President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) held a meeting with some 150 power plant investors at the State Palace on Tuesday to discuss efforts to accelerate the development of projects to generate 35 thousand megawatts (MW) electricity.
“In todays meeting, I want to emphasize again that the power projects to generate 35 thousand MW of electricity are needed. It is not a small figure, and therefore, I always closely monitor the developments in the projects. I always summon the president director of the state-owned electricity firm (PLN) and the relevant minister,” the president stated while addressing the investors at the State Palace in Jakarta on Tuesday.
Indonesia Power Generation 
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