A well-connected Indonesian marine renewable energy company and OpenHydro, a unit of French state-owned naval defense company DCNS SA, aim to be the first to plug into the vast untapped tidal energy potential of the world’s biggest archipelago.
Renewable energy has so far played little part in Indonesia’s power sector, despite the country sitting on the world’s biggest geothermal reserves and being bathed in sunshine, crowded out by an abundance of cheap coal and bureaucratic bottlenecks.
However, declining costs of renewable electricity and a new push by Indonesian President Joko Widodo to develop renewable energy in the remote eastern parts of the archipelago are changing the picture.
Photo: Reuters
With narrow straits straddling the Indian and Pacific oceans, Indonesia has significant tidal power potential, and PT Arus Indonesia Raya (AIR) and OpenHydro plan to build the country’s first such project.
“This project is important for Indonesia and the world so we can stop burning coal,” AIR president Panji Adhikumoro Soeharto told reporters.
OpenHydro, which specializes in the design and manufacture of marine turbines to generate renewable energy from tidal streams, already has projects in Japan, Britain, France and Canada.
The AIR and OpenHydro model would appeal to renewable energy investors because it is relatively inexpensive and low in maintenance compared with other renewable energy sources, said Soeharto, grandchild of former Indonesian president Suharto.
“We’re doing the investment ourselves, with banks,” he said.
He did not say how much had been invested so far.
According to the partners, Indonesia has the potential for up to 60 gigawatts of tidal power, more than Indonesia’s total electricity capacity of just more than 50 gigawatts last year.
Permit issues that often hold up power infrastructure projects should be no obstacle for AIR, Soeharto said, referring to plans to build a factory in Indonesia and utilize 70 percent local content in their turbines.
The turbines, which sit on the seabed, can cost up to US$7 million each in Europe, a cost AIR plans to slash to as little as US$4 million, Soeharto said.
“The only thing we can’t produce is the magnets — French technology. Maybe in future we’ll study this,” he added.
Over the next three years, the two companies plan to develop up to 20 2-megawatt turbines in a pilot tidal array in the Bali Strait, which would supply power directly to state energy company Pertamina, Soeharto said.
According to a release on the DCNS Web site, the Indonesian project is targeted to reach 300 megawatts of installed capacity by 2023.
Indonesia wants renewable energy to make up about one-quarter of its total by 2025, from about 5 percent now, although critics have questioned its seriousness in meeting its climate goals, and its overall plans to ramp up power production have gotten off to a slow start.
However, attitudes toward renewable energy among Asian investors are changing as costs come down and environmental pressures mount, a Singapore-based hedge fund manager told reporters.
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