Prolonged drought intensefies power crisis in Lampung

Oyos Saroso HN, The Jakarta Post, Bandarlampung, Lampung

Blackouts imposed by state-owned electricity company PLN in Lampung over the last several months have caused economic losses and moved customers to refuse to pay their bills.

A gas station owner here said he had seen his daily revenue decline due to the blackouts, which now take place every two days. The blackouts originally took place every three days.

"I was already suffering losses when the power blackouts occurred every three days. I don't know how much money I'm losing now," the businessman, Effendi, 55, said over the weekend.

Internet cafe operator Tony is also angered by the situation. "It might be OK if the electricity went off for two hours, but now the power blackouts can last the whole day, inflicting hundreds of thousands of rupiah in losses."

PLN has been applying blackouts of between four and eight hours from 6 p.m. to 2 a.m. every two days since Sept. 13. The blackouts were ordered in response to a lack of water to operate hydroelectric power plants in Way Besai and Batutegi, the main power suppliers for the province.

The situation is worse in West Lampung, East Lampung, Way Kanan and Tanggamus regencies, where power outages occur almost daily.

Consumer protection activist Saparudin, 30, said Way Kanan had not had electricity at night for the last six months, prompting thousands of subscribers from eight districts in the regency to stop paying the bills.

He said the electricity went off at least three times a day.

"The frequent blackouts have damaged electric-powered home appliances. Can you imagine, these sudden electricity blackouts take place three times a day, just like taking medicine.

"What upsets us is the PLN meter readers who charge us for more than we use," Saparudin said.

As of August no fewer than 30,000 PLN customers in Central Lampung, East Lampung, Way Kanan and Metro have had their power cut off for refusing to pay their electricity bills.

The head of the operational unit at PLN's Tanjungkarang office, Djoko Sutojo, said the company had to impose the blackouts because the prolonged drought had reduced the capability of power plants in the province by 50 percent.

"The hydroelectric power plants used to generate up to 258 megawatts of power, but now their capacity has been reduced to only 125 megawatts," Sutojo said.

Because of the lack of water, the turbines in the plants can only work between two and five hours a day, with a maximum power generation of 70 megawatts. The remaining power is now supplied from the Bukit Asam hydroelectric plant in West Sumatra and some diesel power plants in Lampung, which can generate a total of 260 megawatts.

But Sutojo said only up to 100 megawatts of power from Bukit Asam was able to reach Lampung because many transmitters connecting the plant to the province were inconveniently located.

PLN's Lampung office has been forced to buy 12 megawatts of power from shrimp breeding company PT Central Pertiwi Bahari, which operates its own power plant.

"But we still cannot meet demand because the number of subscribers in increasing," Sutojo said.

There are 715,000 customers registered with the PLN office in Lampung.

An economist said the electricity crisis was keeping foreign investors from the province.

"We have no choice but build more power plants to serve people in the province. The Way Besai hydro power plant supplies most of its power to people in the neighboring province of South Sumatra," the economist from Lampung University, Wahyu Sasongko, said.