Regional Master Plans Needed to Ensure Electricity Supply

MINISTRY OF ENERGY AND MINERAL RESOURCES

REPUBLIC OF INDONESIA

PRESS RELEASE

NUMBER: 272.Pers/04/SJI/2020

Date: 11 September 2020

Regional Master Plans Needed to Ensure Electricity Supply

Synergy between the national government, regional governments, and business actors in electricity planning is needed to ensure the availability of electricity supply to the public, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic.

This was underlined by Secretary of Directorate General of Electricity, Munir Ahmad, in a webinar titled "Reviewing the Direction of National Electricity Planning" which was held by Directorate General of Electricity on Wednesday, (9/9).

"The Covid-19 pandemic has certainly made us examine the direction of national electricity planning, to ensure the supply of electricity to the public," said Munir.

Munir highlighted that some provinces had not prepared their Regional Electricity Master Plans (RUKD's). He hopes these provinces will immediately prepare their RUKD's in order to create the synergy in national electricity planning with both the National Electricity Master Plan (RUKN) and the Electricity Supply Business Plan (RUPTL) of PT PLN (Persero).

Munir went on to present the priorities in the electricity subsector that the government has continued to support, such as increasing national capacity through the 35,000 MW program, improving electrification ratio, rising electricity demand by promoting the use of electric vehicles and rooftop solar systems, and providing electricity billing relief stimulus particularly for those who are most affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Additionally, programs that support domestic mineral processing industry (smelters) and to electrify strategic areas such as Industrial Estates (KI) and Special Economic Zones (KEK) are also prioritized because they need the synergy between the national and regional governments, PT PLN (Persero), and other stakeholders.

On the same occasion, Director of Electricity Program Fostering, Jisman Hutajulu, said that electricity development is directed towards the use of local energy, especially from renewables. Efforts will be made to enable co-firing at steam-fired power plants, namely by substituting coal for biomass. He hopes these plans will be carried out by PLN in coordination with the local governments.

Head of EMR Service Office of Central Java Province, Sujarwanto Dwiatmoko, who was present as one of the resource people, shared his experience preparing the Central Java's RUKD, which he hoped could be duplicated by other provincial governments. He also expects there is a review of the success indicators in the electricity subsector, especially after the electrification ratio target has been achieved.

"Electricity planning must be implemented to see if the planning is workable. Thus, there should be a review of electricity development indicators, because in addition to electrification ratio, we also need a new benchmark, namely per capita consumption," Sujarwanto added.


Executive Vice President of Electricity System Planning of PLN Edwin Nugraha Putra concluded the webinar by presenting his company's plan to engage regional governments in planning regional electricity demand that matches system demand, particularly by using renewables. He also expressed his wish that webinars like this will be held continuously to discuss the system's load demand in a number of regions now that several new power plants have started operation.

"We highly need the cooperation between the national government, regional governments, and PLN. Especially with the outbreak of the Covid-19, what we need to do next is planning the load in order to create the synergy with the supply," he concluded. (IY)

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