Indonesia adds 500 MW into power grid from new mobile power plants

President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo on Saturday officially inaugurated the operation across the archipelago of eight gas-based mobile power plants (MPP) with a total capacity of 500 megawatts (MW).

The simultaneous symbolic inauguration took place during the President’s visit to Mempawah regency, West Kalimantan, the State Palace reported.

Each of the eight power plants has an electricity production capacity of between 25 MW and 100 MW. They are located in Lombok in West Nusa Tenggara, Bangka Island, Lampung in South Sumatra, Pontianak in West Kalimantan, Bengkalis in Riau Islands, Belitung Island and Nias and Medan in North Sumatra. Some of them have been operating since last year.

Mempawah, home to some 250,000 people, is located next to the West Kalimantan provincial capital of Pontianak, whose new MPP can generate up to 100 MW of electricity.

The current government is aiming to exponentially increase the amount of power available to the nation by 2019 through an ongoing program to generate an additional 35,000 MW of electricity.

The project is basically a continuation of the attempt by then president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono during his first presidential term in 2005 to generate an additional 10,000 MW of electricity to keep the reserve margins — the difference between capacity and peak demand — within the International Energy Agency's recommended level of 20 to 35 percent. (ecn/hwa)

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