Independence Geothermal Energy in
Indonesia
The first exploration of
geothermal resource in indonesia was at Kawah Kamojang on 1918. On 1926 until
1929, five exploration well has been drilled, one off the exploration well still
productive until this year, it’s KMJ-3 well still produce dry steam. From the
survey result reported that indonesia has 217 geothermal prospects, there are
at along vulcanic line start from Western Sumatra, Java Island, Bali, Nusa
Tenggara, until Maluku and Sulawesi. The next survey found some of new prospect
area, because of that the amount of prospect area increase become 256
prospects, consist of 84 prospects in Sumatra, 76 prospects in Java Island, 51
prospects in Sulawesi, 21 prospects in Nusa Tenggara, 3 prospects in Irian, 15
prospects in Maluku and 5 prospect in Kalimantan. Geothermal system in
Indonesia generaly has a high temperature (more than 225 C), just some of them which has average
temperature ( 150-225 C).

Utilization of Geothermal devided by
two (2) sector, there are Non-electrical sector (Direct Use), and electrical
sector. Non-electrical sector was exploited since 70 years ago in Iceland. Along
with increasing of oil price and the requirement of electrical energy, especially
on 1973 and 1979, has been spur other countries to exploit the geothermal
resource to decrease dependence of fossil fuel. Nowadays geothermal energy was
used as electrical generating in 24 countries, include Indonesia. Beside that
geothermal fluid is also used for Non-electrical sector in 72 countries, such
as for room heater, water heater, green house heater, drainage product of
agriculture result, ground heater, wooden and paper drainage.
Geothermal is a
environmental friendly energy because after conferted to electrical energy the
geothermal fluid is re-injected to reservoir from injection well. Re-injection
the geothermal fluid, and also water recharge in surface, made geothermal
energy as a sustainable energy. Di emession from electrical generating is lower
then fossil fuel and coal energy. Because of the lower emission, geothermal
energy has and chance to support Kyoto Protocol Product that is Clean
Development Mechnism (CDM). The other special quality from geothermal is
capacity factor, that is ratio between average load generated in period with
maximum load. The average of capacity factor from geothermal electrical
generating is 95%, it’s more higher then coal capacity factor (6070%).
For geothermal energy,
in “National Energy Management Road Map”, Goverment determine increasing
utilization plan of geothermal step by step in Indonesia, from 807 MWe on 2005
until 9500 MWe on 2025, that is 5% from renewal energy 2025 or equal with 167.5
Mbbl oil. Some script needed to get confirmation and pressing in solve the
geothermal problem in Indonesia, are :
- Geothermal mastery technology must to execute with multidicipline knowladge, exploitation and also energy convertion technlogy.
- Determining based price of sales geothermal electricity.
- Risk of the resource, suche as the probability of dry hole geothermal energy, amount of reserve which not comertial or unstable geothermal energy resource.
- Goverment support is fully needed in any policy to accelerate geothermal growth from technology mastery, administration, operatitional and bussiness, until the geothermal not become a script that easy to forget.
Hope
that the development planning that has been arranged, goverment regulation that
alaways has revision to immidiatly exploited geothermal potential as maximum as
possible. the most important thing are sincerity and workteam between goverment
and society to developt geothermal potential to real realization.
-Sandria
Fat