S

tate power utility PT Perusahaan Listrik Negara (PLN) says it booked 5 million pre-paid customers in May, the largest number of any power company in the world.

PLN president director Nur Pamudji said that South Africa, which introduced pre-paid electricity service in 1993, was previously the nation with the largest pre-paid base, with around 4 million customers.

 “Indonesia just launched pre-paid service for customers in 2005. Now, we already have 5 million pre-paid customers scattered in 27 provinces across the country,” he told reporters after the installation of electricity for PLN’s five-millionth pre-paid customer, Elah, a resident of Klebet in Tangerang, Banten.

Nur said that PLN would advise new household customers to use pre-paid service, since users would more easily be able to control their power use and since installation costs were the same as those charged for conventional-electricity customers.

This year, PLN aims to add 2.5 million new household connections, to be funded by Rp 4 trillion ($US436 million) to Rp 5 trillion from PLN’s budget and Rp 9 trillion from the state budget.

Most of PLN’s pre-paid customers reside in West Java and Banten, which have a combined customer base of 1.66 million, followed by East Java with 853,685 customers, Central Java and Yogyakarta with 581,443 customers, Jakarta and Tangerang with 486,599 customers and Bali with 216,259 customers, according to the company.

The penetration of pre-paid electricity service is also quite strong. In West Nusa Tenggara, PLN’s customer numbers top 206,000, the highest in eastern Indonesia, followed by East Nusa Tenggara with 120,179.

In western Indonesia, Lampung is the province with PLN’s highest number of pre-paid customers at 138,772.

PLN planning and risk management director Murtaqi Syamsuddin said that seven companies asked PLN to provide electricity for their planned smelters.

Two of the companies, PT Bosowa Metal Industri and PT Bumi Modern Sejahtera, had already signed memorandums of understanding with PLN, he added.

“The remaining five companies have sent letters to us saying that they plan to build smelters and asking us to provide electricity supply,” he said, declining to name the other firms.

The smelters would require around 150 Megawatts (Mw) to be supplied at rates negotiated under a business-to-business mechanism.

As reported earlier, Bosowa plans to build a smelter in Jeneponto, South Sulawesi, while Bumi Modern wants to set up smelters in East Java and Palopo, South Sulawesi.

Murtaqi said PLN would be ready to supply the smelters in South Sulawesi by 2014, while it currently had sufficient capacity to supply the proposed East Java smelters.

“In Sumatra, we predict we can supply smelters by 2014, while in Kalimantan, it may take longer, around 2017,” he said.