PLN to provide power-saving lamps to consumers
Thursday, June 22 2006 - 02:47 AM WIB
?We?re working on this and hopefully we can start the efficiency project in August,? the company?s director of commerce and customer service, Sunggu Anwar Aritonang, said Wednesday after a breakfast meeting of executives from state-owned companies.
He said that through cooperation with the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and producers of energy-efficient lamps, the PLN would provide lamps to each household to replace their electric light bulbs.
Lamps will be provided to six million household consumers with power connection capacity ranging from 450 to 2,200 volts.
ADB has agreed to provide a loan of US$30.3 million to finance the project, he said
?We hope to save about 2,000 megawatts from this energy-saving project. It will mean a saving of 574,000 kiloliters of diesel fuel worth about Rp 2.87 trillion (US$319.3 million) from the efficiency program.?
Despite the loss of Rp 758 billion in revenue resulting from the project plus the ADB loan, the energy company could still save about Rp 1.8 trillion, he added. Sunggu said the government also asked all state-owned companies to cut down on their electricity use by at least 10 percent.
?Currently, state-owned firms spend about Rp 1.5 trillion for electricity every year. If they can save 10 percent, then PLN can cut its fuel consumption up to 80,000 kiloliters, which is worth about Rp 150 billion per year,? he said.
?That may be small in amount, but it can stand as a good example for the public to follow.?
PLN president Djuanda Nugraha Ibrahim said that his company was awaiting a presidential regulation that would allow it to award contracts to build coal-fired power stations without an open bidding process.
?We hope that the President will sign the presidential regulation this week, so that we can start the selection of investors to develop the US$7.6 billion project.?
He hoped that his company could start awarding the contracts to the companies - Foreign or local - they chose in September. ?As the investors will need about 33 months to build the power stations, we hope that by the year 2009, we?ll have a new supply of at least 8,000 MW
With fears the power crisis will impede business development, the government has asked the PLN to build new coal-fired power stations. Indonesia has an abundant supply of coal and its price is much cheater than increasingly expensive diesel fuel, which is now widely used by power stations across the archipelago.
After the breakfast meeting, State Enterprises Minister Sugiharto confirmed that President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono would soon sign the presidential regulation.
?The goal of this regulation is to enable PLN to hasten the development of the power stations so that the electricity shortage can be solved,? he said. (*)