PLN starts tender for Sumatra solar power plant projects
Wednesday, May 31 2017 - 01:08 AM WIB
Petromindo
State-owned electricity firm PT PLN has started tender process for the planned development of solar power plants (also known as PLTS) in Sumatra with combined capacity of 168 MW.
PLN Corporate Planning Director Nicke Widyawati said on Tuesday that the PLTS projects are grouped into a number clusters scattered in several regions of Sumatra in accordance with the existing transmission networks of PLN.
?We have studied the locations (of the planned projects), they?re in line with the readiness of our system, from North Sumatra to South Sumatra,? Nicke said.
Each cluster has a number of PLTS projects with total capacity of around 20 MW so as to make them economically feasible for the developers. ?We group the projects into clusters, each with capacity of around 20 MW to meet the economic scale. If it?s (the capacity) too small, it will be difficult (for the developers), so each cluster must at least have 20 MW capacity,? she said.
Nicke added that the selling price of electricity from the PLTS projects to PLN will be based on the tariff set under the Minister of Energy and Mineral Resources Regulation No 12/2017, which limits the tariff of electricity from renewables at 85 percent of the PLN regional electricity supply cost (BPP), except for geothermal and city-waste power plants.
The new tariff framework has been previously protested by some power producers as it would make many renewable projects to be no longer commercially feasible. They said that only projects located in eastern part of Indonesia such as Papua and Maluku where the local BPP are relatively higher will be feasible.
Elsewhere, Nicke said that PLN will hold tender for PLTS projects in other parts of the country with total capacity of 423 MW. She did not provide further details.
Editing by Reiner Simanjuntak