Bali bracing for a week of possible outages

Residents of Bali have been told to brace for a week of random power outages starting Friday following
a plan to do maintenance work on the Gilimanuk and Pesanggrahan power plants.

The plants will stop operating temporarily during the maintenance overhauls, and will likely reduce
Bali’s electricity supply by 188.8 megawatts.

“With the maintenance that will cost Rp 3 billion (US$345,000), the electricity supply from Gilimanuk and Pesanggaran will be stopped temporarily,” PT PLN Bali and Nusa Tenggara general manager Dadan Koerniadipoera said Thursday.

The Gilimanuk power plant generates 130 megawatts of electricity while the Pesanggaran plant produces 40 megawatts.

That leaves Bali’s electricity supply to rely on the Payton plant in Java to provide Bali’s needed 540 megawatts.

The island’s residents have been encouraged to reduce their power consumption in order to avoid a possible week-long blackout.

Koerniadipoera said the maintenance work was necessary after 6,000 hours of plant operations.

“We should have done this in November of last year. But, it was the peak holiday season on the island when people and the tourist industry needed adequate electricity supplies,” he said, adding that electricity demand in Bali increased by 11 percent annually.

During peak hours, which are in the evening, Bali needs 540 megawatts while in the daytime it needs 440 megawatts. Eighty megawatts are reserved as an emergency supply.

Ngurah Adnyana, the operational director of the Java and Bali branch of PLN, said in 2018 Bali would generate 2,027 megawatts of electricity if all planned projects were realized.

Koerniadipoera said hotels and large industry should use their own power generators, which could save 28 megawatts. “We understand that such a policy will affect hotel operations costs.”

Two weeks ago, a two-hour-long blackout disrupted operations at Bali’s Ngurah Rai International Airport, leaving hundreds of passengers stranded at check-in counters.