Lontar power plant ready to operate in December

The ongoing construction of Banten 3 steam power plant in Lontar village in Tangerang regency has reached up to 87 percent of total completion.

Rusdi Djohan, the power plant project manager, told The Jakarta Post on Friday engineers at the plant successfully conducted back-feeding or funneling high-tension power from the existing Java-Bali electricity system into to new power plant on Sept. 23.

Back-feeding was aimed at running the motors with medium and low tension to try out the already installed generator devices and the construction.

Rusdi said the Lontar power plant, built on 94 hectares of land in Tangerang’s north coastal area, consists of three station units that will respectively produce 315 megawatts.

The new power plant, worth Rp 7 trillion, will add power supply to Greater Jakarta.

“We are working hard to stream power to the PLN power network system on Dec. 31 from unit 1,” Rusdi said, adding that engineers would still have to complete a series of tests, checks and rechecks (synchronization) prior to its operation.

According to Rusdi, the next phase after the sync is commercial operational date (COD) of unit station 1 which is planned to start on April 7 next year. COD for unit station 2 will start on June 7 and COD for unit station to start on 3 Aug. 7.

Soon after the project started in 2007, dozens of angry locals torched the office of the project's main contractor, PT Dongfang Electric Corporation, company dormitories, seven cars, three units of heavy machinery and motorcycles.

The Lontar power plant with a total capacity of 945 MW is one of the 37 coal-fired power plants prepared under the government’s first 10,000 MW electricity fast track program.