PLN moves power plant from Riau to Lampung

State owned electricity company PT PLN has relocated a gas fired power plant from Riau to Lampung to replace a hydropower plant in the province which has stopped operation after being hit by floods early this month, Koran Tempo reported on Tuesday.

PLN?s director for operation, Bambang Hemiyanto, said in Jakarta on Tuesday he hoped that the operation of the 50-megawatts power plant would be able to solve the shortage of the power supply in the province.

The 90-megawatt hydropower plant in the Besai river, Bukit Kemuning, North Lampung, which only started operation in March last year, failed to operate after being hit by floods. The plant was built with investment of about US$100 million.

A construction engineer estimated that the damage was due to the poor designs of the power plant. "How could a hydropower plant is damaged only due to floods," he said. But Bambang said that the damage was beyond the company?s control. "It is due to a natural disaster, we can not detect it in advance," he said.

However, he said that the Besai power plant was the only hydropower plants in the country which suffered a damage due to floods.

According to him, PLN had asked the contractor of the plant, Vateca Ellin from Europe to inspect the damage caused by the floods. "The contractor should be responsible for the damage. We asked them to come because they carried out the project," he said.

Bambang said that the damage had inflicted loss of billions of rupiah to the electricity company. (*)