PLN Boss Calls El Nino Threatens Electricity Installation

JAKARTA - PT PLN (Persero) held the 2023 Christmas and New Year 2024 Electricity Alert Apples on Wednesday, December 20, 2023.

The President Director of PLN, Darmawan Prasodjo in his speech, emphasized that one of the challenges faced by the 2024 Christmas and New Year alerts was the impact of El Nino where extreme weather occurred, such as heavy rain, accompanied by lightning, strong winds and floods. This also threatens the installation of PLN electricity.

He said this had the most impact on areas that rely on supplies from hydroelectric power plants (PLTA) such as South Sulawesi, whose supply power is currently reduced by 700 megawatts due to the water level in lakes which has decreased drastically during the long dry season.

"With El Nino, it turns out that the wind that was blowing strong has not blown so that our operating bayu power plant has also reduced its electricity production," Darmawan said in his remarks, Wednesday, December 20.

For this reason, he said, PLN deployed all teams at PLN to map all challenges so that they could continue to provide a reliable electricity system.

"For this reason, we have carried out preventive assessments and maintenance of plant installations, transmission networks, and distribution networks. We are strengthening the generators, transmission networks and distribution networks," added Darmawan.

He added that PLN also has a digital control system that regulates the electricity system automatically if there is a disturbance from external factors.

"This makes the PLN electricity system much stronger. In addition, we also continue to maintain and supervise 24-hour electricity control centers," he continued.

He further added, with the impact of El Nino, this also has the potential to interfere with the process of providing coal for PLN's power plants.

"For this reason, we have taken preventive measures to ensure the availability of coal in sufficient power plants. We have built a digital system of primary energy supply chains for integrated power plants with the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources. The presence of this integrated digital system makes the primary energy supply chain system much stronger," concluded Darmawan.