RI Needs Strengthening Electricity Infrastructure To Reach The Location Of Potential EBT

New renewable energy (Photo: dock. unsplash)

JAKARTA - Indonesia's new renewable energy development (EBT) is faced with various challenges. One of the obstacles faced is the distance from the electricity demand center from locations that have the potential for EBT electricity.

Director of General Electricity, Jisman P Hutajulu, said that to accelerate the development of EBT, Indonesia still needs strengthening electricity infrastructure.

"The large location of EBT potential is generally far from the load center, so we need to strengthen the electricity transmission infrastructure to evacuate electrical energy from its potential to the load center," said Jisman, quoted on Wednesday, November 15.

To overcome this problem, Jisman said the government would build superlattices to optimize the potential for renewable energy in five main islands such as Sumatra, Java, Kalimantan, Sulawesi, and Nusa Tenggara-Bali.

Later this interconnection will spread along 112 kilometers of circuits (kms) and require high-voltage airways and submarine cable channels.

From a year old, currently Java Island has 500 kV of HVAC transmission and for the Sumatra region, 500 kV of HVAC transmission is being developed from South Sumatra to North Sumatra. Similarly, PLN President Director Darmawan Prasodjo who is also the Chairman of the MKI Supervisory Board emphasized that PLN has designed an Accelerated Renewable Energy Development (ARED) which will overcome these challenges.

Through ARED, PLN will develop a green enabling transmission line and smart grid capable of supplying electricity from separate and isolated EBT sources to electricity demand centers.

According to him, ARED is also able to increase the capacity and reliability of the PLN system to channel electricity from EBT sources whose characters are intermittent or fluctuating along with weather changes.

"How will we overcome this intermittency? We are in the process of designing and developing smart grids. Flexible generation, smart transmission digitization, smart distribution, smart meters so we can add 5 Gigawatts (GW) of EBT to 32 GWs can be included in the PLN system," he explained.

Darmawan also revealed that in the latest RUKN, the Government and PLN have agreed to increase the EBT mix by 75 percent and the remaining 25 percent will come from gas by 2040. That way, he is optimistic, with the support of the government and the global community, Indonesia's energy transition can continue to be encouraged.