Green World Conferences are pleased to announce that the HydroTech Indonesia 2015 conference and exhibition will be held on 09-10 September 2015 in Jakarta.
Indonesia’s potential for hydropower generation is immense. With the escalating demand for energy, various companies and government authorities are keen to harness renewable energy from the country’s many rivers. This is particularly true of remote communities for which connecting to the national power grid is prohibitively expensive. Thus, local hydropower production from small power plants – known as mini-hydropower plants – is an attractive and viable option.
Indonesia’s government plans to build hydroelectric plants at 239 dams owned by the Public Works Ministry, as part of its renewable energy initiative.
“We will rent the dams to developers so they will only be responsible for building the power generators, which would reduce investment costs greatly,” said Ridha Mulyana, the director general for new and renewable energy at the Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry. He added that the rental fee will be determined by the Finance Ministry.
The director general also said that the government has yet to set a feed-in-tariff — the rate set by the government at which state utility Perusahaan Listrik Negara buys electricity from private power producers — under the plan.
Ridha said that the government is yet to determine whether such projects will be assigned to state enterprises or given to private investors.
This year alone, as part of the project, the government plans to kick-start the construction of four hydropower plants in East Java, said Ridha. The combined capacity of these four new plants is forecast to reach as much as 146.52 megawatts.
Private investors have also expressed interest in building similar facilities in five locations, which would have total power capacity at around 16.94 megawatts, according to Ridha.
The current feed-in-tariff for a hydropower plant with a capacity of less than 10 megawatts is between Rp 975 and Rp 1,378 (8 and 12 cents) per kilowatt hour.
As of 2013, hydroelectricity accounted for 8.78 percent of the country’s installed capacity of 46,428 megawatts, according to the Energy Ministry.