Indonesia to electrify rural villages with $84m solar plant scheme

Indonesia will spend US$84m to build large-scale solar plants to supply electricity to rural areas of the country, according to a senior official.

The Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry plans to build 250 solar power plants, with a total capacity of 2.2MW by 2014, to provide electricity to remote areas that have no access to the national power grid.

"The electricity produced by the plants will benefit between 150,000 and 200,000 households in different parts of the country," the ministry’s director general of electricity, Jacobus Purwono, told the Jakarta Globe yesterday.

The announcement of the plan follows news last week that Japan plans to offer a US$400m loan to Indonesia to help tackle global warming.

The solar plants are part of the Southeast Asian nation's alternative energy plans, which call for the installation of solar panels at 192,000 homes, construction of 570 small-scale hydroelectric plants with a total capacity of 45MW, and the development of 270 wind farms with a combined capacity of 21MW.

According to government figures, only 65 per cent of Indonesia's 240 million citizens have access to electricity. The population is spread out over more than 17,000 islands, with some of the nation's easternmost isles lacking connections to the National Grid.

The government said that equipping remote regions with renewable energy sources would help electrify villages while keeping with its planned policy to cut CO2 emissions 26 per cent by 2020.