JAKARTA, Oct 27 — Indonesia’s state electricity firm PT Perusahaan Listrik Negara (PLN) plans to buy electricity from the Malaysian peninsula for Sumatra island, a company official said today.
PLN operates around 25,000 megawatts of electricity, but most of its plants are old, so daily output is far below capacity. Sumatra island still suffers from frequent blackouts, and most parts of the island have electrification ratio of between 41-60 per cent.
“We expect to build inter-connection cable from Malaysia to Sumatra island which would be able to transmit 600 megawatts of electricity,” PLN’s spokesman Ario Subijoko said.
“We will buy the electricity from Malaysia. PLN also plans to sell electricity to Malaysia if they need it in future,” he said.
He said PLN and Tenaga Nasional signed a preliminary agreement last week, but the companies still need to discuss details of the planned interconnection.
Subijoko said about 200 kilometres of undersea cable would be built, starting in 2012 for completion in 2015. Indonesia hopes to get funding from the World Bank and other financial institutions, he said.
Southeast Asia’s biggest economy is aiming to tap alternative sources of energy to meet rising power demand and cut consumption of expensive crude oil as its reserves dwindle.
It has a crash programme to add 10,000 MW of coal-fired power stations to tackle its power crisis and meet electricity demand that officials say is growing at around 10 per cent a year — Reuters
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