The Ministry Of Energy And Mineral Resources Guarantees The Reliability Of Energy Supply In Order To Fulfill Christmas And New Year's Electricity Needs

Photo: Doc. Antara

JAKARTA - The Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources (ESDM) guarantees the reliability of energy supply including primary energy to meet the needs of power plants during the Christmas and New Year 2023 holidays.

Secretary-General of the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources, Rida Mulyana, said that the reliability of primary energy supply for generating operations is one of the keys to the safety of electricity availability today, especially the Suralaya PLTU, which has the primary energy of coal and is one of the backbones of the electricity system in Java, Madura, and Bali.

"Signifikan perannya untuk sistem Jawa, Madura, dan Bali. Kami memastikan rantai pasok mulai dari energi primer sampai ke kesiapan operatornya hingga penyediaan listrik ke masyarakat bisa kami pastikan tercapai," ujarnya dalam keterangannya, dikutip dari Antara, Minggu 25 Desember.Direktur Utama PLN Darmawan Prasodjo dalam kesempatan berbeda mengatakan PLTU Suralaya yang berlokasi di Cilegon, Banten, berkapasitas 3,400 megawatt dapat beroperasi memenuhi kebutuhan listrik sistem Jawa, Madura, dan Bali selama libur Natal dan Tahun Baru 2023.

According to him, PLTU Suralaya now supplies 12 percent of electricity needs in Java and Bali, so coal-fired power plants have a vital role for electricity in the region. "If Christmas 2021 and New Year 2022, the condition of coal supply at PLTU Suralaya is a bit critical, this year it is very good and is the best operating day in history," said Darmawan.

During the 2022 New Year holiday, the condition of PLTU Suralaya's coal supply was in a critical point with an operating day of less than seven days. Meanwhile, the Christmas and New Year 2023 holidays, coal supply has reached 30 operating days. Dammawan said the long operating day achievement was the result of PLN's joint government efforts and stakeholders in the domestic coal industry in ensuring the availability of primary energy was fulfilled. Since early 2022, PLN has made changes to the paradigm in monitoring and controlling coal supply. Initially, the supervision focused only on loading points or estimated time of arrival (ETA), but now it has become focused on loading or loading points.

Supervision steps are carried out not only through physical in the field but also by integrating a digital monitoring system between the PLN system and the system at the Directorate General of Mineral and Coal of the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources.

The system provides information on target loading and integrated with the system at the Directorate General of Mineral and Coal of the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources which records the realization of loading from each supplier. "With a system like this, if there is a potential for supply failure due to the availability of coal and its transport fleet, it will be detectable early. Not only that, corrective action can be carried out as early as possible so that supply certainty can be better maintained," concluded Darmawan.