Reflection on National Electricity Day: Turning Our 20th-century Machine for the New Era

As a nation with quite a bunch of commemorative dates, National Electricity Day may be one of the overlooked ones, celebrated by only a few concerned ministerial bodies or institutions. This seems quite ironic, as electricity is undoubtedly integral to everyone’s life nowadays. People in the early days of Indonesia, however, were not as fortunate. Electricity infrastructure in Indonesia only started in the late 1800s, beginning as a captive generation in colonial Dutch manufacturing sites. After Indonesia gained independence, due to Government Stipulation No. 1 on October 27, 1945, the Electricity and Gas Bureau was formed and the date is commemorated as National Electricity Day.

How does our electricity system look today?

Fast forward to today, our century-old electricity system serves over 85.6 million connected customers all over the archipelago with a total demand of 273 TWh yearly (PLN, 2023). By the end of 2021, 99.45% of households are connected to electricity, which is a major improvement from 88.3% in 2015 (MEMR, 2022). The majority of our electricity is supplied by fossil power plants, namely coal, gas, and diesel which comprise 86% of our generation. PT PLN Persero serves as the sole provider in this vertically integrated, single-buyer market that Indonesia adopts, although other electricity provision methods are available through PPU and captive power scheme.

Electricity consumption is one of the main indicators of well-being, with our per capita consumption gradually increasing to 1,122 kWh annually in 2022. That is why the Indonesian government (through MEMR and PLN) has put an aggressive capacity expansion plan ahead, to match the national aspiration of becoming one of the leading economies in 2045. However, we cannot blind ourselves that currently our electricity system is heavily reliant on fossil sources, leading to a total of around 290 million tons of CO2 being released to the atmosphere annually from the power sector. Without proper intervention, our emissions in the power sector would skyrocket to 642 million tons of CO2 annually in 2060 (MEMR, 2023).

Efforts have been made, such as Presidential Regulation 112/2022 to limit coal-fired power plants while accelerating renewables development, MEMR’s 2060 net-zero emission (NZE) roadmap which also reflected in the latest National General Electricity Plan (Rencana Umum Ketenagalistrikan Nasional/RUKN), and international partnership such as Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP) to help Indonesia move away from fossil power reliance. But all of the efforts would certainly go in vain if innovative ideas on incorporating more renewable sources are not apparent in the electricity planning and operation ahead.

Moving away from the old paradigm

Simply said, our electricity system is an ever-running, decades-old machine, lubricated and run with 20th-century operation principles. Power sources are in bulk and centralized, generated far away from load centers from dispatchable energy sources which are mainly from fossil fuels. Most of these power plants are being operated on a rather fixed capacity factor, most notably coal plants, limiting their flexible capability. Consumers are viewed as passive objects in the system with no significant contribution to balance the system, and the transmission and distribution system serves as a one-way supply line from generation to consumers. These principles can be found in our 90s power systems textbooks, and are still very useful, but rather outdated and can be quite limited in upcoming challenges ahead.

As we roll into the 21st century, a paradigm shift becomes a necessity. Renewable power sources are abundant but scattered geographically. It makes zero sense to impose a centralized approach on power system planning, neglecting available local energy resources. A decentralized system would be quite advantageous for archipelagic countries such as Indonesia, where remote grids can be self-sufficient by utilizing local potentials. Transmission and distribution infrastructures are no longer unidirectional and static, but bidirectional and dynamic, acting as a bridge between various resources and grids. Variability and intermittency of renewable sources such as solar and wind should not be seen as a gatekeeper, but rather as a certainty to be embraced in our journey to move away from a fossil-reliant system. Last but not least, consumers are invited to be a participative agent in the system through demand response measures and distributed energy resources such as rooftop PV (thus the term ‘prosumer’ becoming more prominent). 

Of course, this paradigm shift is not without challenges. Investment in more advanced control centers and digitalized monitoring infrastructures will be crucial in improving the predictability of variable resources such as solar and wind. With more inverter-based resources (IBRs), operational characteristics would experience major differences, thus continuous capacity building on grid operations is essential to ensure the system’s reliability.

While the challenges are apparent, this transformation is no rocket science, as evidence all around the globe already exists. It is a matter of political will and collective effort to fine-tune our long-serving machine to embrace the new era.