TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Govt defends expansion of coal power station
The 2-gigawatt (GW) expansion of a coal-fired power plant in Suralaya, Banten, is necessary to catch up with rising electricity demand, an official with the Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry says.
Change text size
Gift Premium Articles
to Anyone
Share the best of The Jakarta Post with friends, family, or colleagues. As a subscriber, you can gift 3 to 5 articles each month that anyone can read—no subscription needed!
Smoke and steam billow from a coal-fired power plant in Suralaya, Banten, on July 11, 2020. (Reuters/Willy Kurniawan)
T
he government has defended the expansion of a coal-fired power plant in Suralaya, Banten, arguing that the 2 gigawatts (GW) of additional capacity are needed to catch up with rising electricity demand.
Construction of the ultra-super critical (USC) Java 9 and 10 units was completed at the end of August, but the full extra capacity will only enter the Java-Madura-Bali grid, which currently faces a massive electricity oversupply, by April next year.
At the end of last year, the excess supply of the grid was recorded at 4 GW, Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry data show. That is down, however, from 7 GW of excess supply recorded at the end of 2022.
Environmental groups have criticized the construction of coal power plants, arguing that generating more electricity from the fossil fuel would worsen the oversupply issue in the Java-Madura-Bali grid and be counterproductive for Indonesia’s energy transition efforts.
Jisman Hutajulu, the electricity director general at the energy ministry, said the operation of the Java 9 and 10 units was in line with the growing electricity demand in the Java-Bali region due to the establishment of data centers, which require large amounts of electricity to run servers that host websites, store data and power cloud-computing applications.
“Most of the customers are data centers [with] large amount [of electricity consumption]. So we have to race with new power plants, that’s why we are preparing the RUPTL [long-term electricity procurement plan],” Jisman told reporters on Friday, as Kumparan reported, without specifying the data centers he was referring to.
Moreover, Jisman said he expected the government to deal with the excess electricity supply problem in the Java-Madura-Bali interconnection grid next year, which would further justify the need for new power plants.
