PLN Boss Calls SPKLU In Rest Areas Only Crowded During Eid Moments

Illustration (Photo: Doc Antara)

JAKARTA - President Director of PT PLN Darmawan Prasodjo revealed that currently Public Electric Vehicle Charging Stations (SPKLU) built in rest areas do not sell well or are empty of visitors.

Darmawan said that the SPKLU in the rest area was only crowded during the Lebaran moment where many people went home to their hometowns.

"After that, at the rest area, our charging station, our public electric vehicle charging station is not selling well, today it is not selling well. It only sells at Lebaran," Darmawan said in a Hearing Meeting with Commission IV of the Indonesian House of Representatives, Tuesday, December 3.

Darmawan said, although not in demand, PLN did not revoke the charging facility for these electric vehicles.

This is intended to anticipate a surge in the number of electric vehicles that will carry out charging during Eid al-Fitr in 2025.

"But we can't allow it later during Lebaran, the homecoming car is five times, suddenly there are 100-200 running out of electricity in the middle of the road," he continued.

For this reason, his party builds careful planning with the rest area so that the number of charging can be adjusted to the manufacture of electric vehicles.

Furthermore, Darmawan said, PLN reflects on the experience of increasing transactions at SPKLU up to five times in Eid al-Fitr 2024. For this reason, PLN has increased various types of SPKLU.

He detailed, if using a normal SPKLU, an electric car will take 3 hours to charge so that a mid-charging SPKLU is built which takes 2 hours.

"Meanwhile, if fast charging is still around 15 to 20 minutes, it is different from filling one minute of gasoline. So if the queue is 10, 10 times 20 minutes, 200 minutes, that means 3.5 hours. So during Eid, the Board of Directors of PT PLN is currently busy," he explained.

Darmawan also ensured that there would be no snaking queues at the SPKLU in the rest area at the moment of Eid al-Fitr 2025.

"Later on, at Eid, we will go down from rest area to rest area that follows the traffic jam, because we only make sure that one owner of the electric car on the road runs out of electricity," he said.