Green energy power set to increase by 3600 MW this year
Friday, January 29 2016 - 09:36 AM WIB
The capacity of green energy power plants in Indonesia is set to increase by 3,600 MW this year thanks to the scheduled operation of a number of power plants, particularly solar power plants, Director General of New Renewable Energy and Energy Conservation (EBTKE) Ridha Mulyana said.
As of end-2015, green energy power plants of the country have a combined capacity of 8,598.18 MW, up by 101.21 MW from 8,496.97 MW in 2014, according to Ridha.
Hydropower makes up the largest segment of Indonesia?s green power plants with a total capacity of 5,331.85 MW. Other types of power are bioenergy power with a total capacity of 1,741.40 MW, geothermal power (1,438.50 MW), solar power (80.25 MW), wind power (2.42 MW) and hybrid power (3.76 MW).
?Most of the additional capacities for this year are expected to come from solar power,? Ridha said, adding some of hydropower projects could fail to come onstream this year due to various problems.
Ridha said one of the largest renewable energies which Indonesia has in abundance is geothermal. The development of geothermal however has been slow due to mainly its high development cost which results in a high selling price of geothermal power. In order to drive the development of this type of energy, the government plan to introduce a feed-in tariff scheme which is expected to be attractive for investors.
The new feed-in tariff that has been formulated by the government is being evaluated by experts in the United Kingdom and New Zealand and the evaluation is expected to be completed in February this year, Ridha said.
Editing by Johannes Simbolon