Salak power plant starts operation
JAKARTA (JP): The third unit at the geothermal plant in Salak mountain in West Java owned by PT Pembangkitan Tenaga Listrik Jawa-Bali I (PJB I) has started commercial operation.
Ansaldo Energy of Italy, which supplied the unit's machinery and built the plant, said yesterday that the 55 Megawatt (MW) power unit came on stream on schedule in late August.
The vice president of Ansaldo Asia-Pacific, Carlo Del Corso, told The Jakarta Post that the new power unit, called Salak 3, was the third built by Ansaldo for PJB 1, a subsidiary of the State Electricity Company, PLN.
Ansaldo had earlier built the Salak 1 and 2 power units, each also with 55 MW capacities, Del Corso said.
He said the development of the Salak 3 power unit was financed with US$55 million in export credit from Italian banks, while Salak 1 and 2 were funded with $88 million in export credits and a bilateral loan from the Italian government.
Del Corso said Salak 3 marked an important step for the local industry as it was the first geothermal power unit to use a large percentage of local components.
"The local content of the machinery at Salak 3 reached 25 percent," he said, adding that the power unit used a steam turbine which was partly manufactured and wholly assembled at state-owned the PT PAL workshop in Surabaya, East Java.
According to Del Corso, PAL and Ansaldo have signed a cooperation agreement to manufacture machinery for geothermal plants.
PAL is under the supervision of the Indonesian Agency for Strategic Industries, headed by State Minister of Research and Technology B.J. Habibie.
The Salak geothermal power plant will become the largest in the country with six power units with a total installed capacity of 330 MW power when complete. The other three power units -- Salak 4,5 and 6 -- each with a capacity of 55 MW, are being developed by Unocal Geothermal Indonesia. They are expected to come on stream soon.
Del Corso said that besides the power units at Salak, Ansaldo had also completed a 60 MW power unit in Dieng, Central Java, for a consortium controlled by California Energy of the United States. This unit is now at the commissioning stage. (jsk)