As industries in areas such as energy, this week I had the opportunity to visit a Geothermal project yg still running in a small town in North Tapanuli Regency, North Sumatra, namely Sarulla. Yg is a town approximately 30 kilometers from PLTP is building this Tarutung (Geothermal power plant) yg has been running since the year 2014 yg is a consortium between PT Pertamina Goethermal Energy (PGE) and Medco Indonesia Power, Ormat International (USA), Itochu Corporation (Japan) and Kyushu Electric Power Company (Japan). With a target of 330 MW yg divided 3 stages of development in the year 2016, 2017 and 2018 will obviously make the Sarulla as PLTP Geothemal or largest in the world. In fact, this project was built to increase electricity supply in North Sumatra byar reply often have pet, because as long as it relies solely on PLTU in Sicanang, Belawan yg clearly could not compensate for the development of the province's reply so rapidly. This project is in fact already started to talk about the Government in Indonesia through PT Pertamina (Persero) with investors from Japan and the United States since 1993. After going through a lot of discussions ongoing, this project eventually began to be started since 2014 and then by taking geothermal power or Geothermal in the area around Sarulla, namely Siariaria, Sibual and Namora Buali for use as a power plant. Pipes for the collection of Energy Geothermal yg processed into electric energy in Sarulla (Personal Documentation) construction of PLTP yg delayed more 15 years is said to cost about 800 million USD and is mostly poured from Japan. Originally planned, each kwh electricity produced will be sold to PLN is priced at $ 0.4622. Electricity generated is expected to meet 1/3 of the electricity needs of North Sumatra Province, in particular to meet the needs of the industry. But the project was halted and then resumed in 2002. But at that time the project was again bogged down because of votes due to the absence of transparency so as to give rise to a conflict between investors and even with the population, due to no details of land acquisition for extracting geothermal wells. Finally in April 2014 project was scrapped with the Medco Power as the biggest shareholder and project can be prepared in phase I targeted 2016, with advantage for PLN is to save fuel oil of 1 million USD/day as well as reducing CO2 emissions wrote negatively impact the environment. If we look closely development of PLTP Sarulla, then we can only learn from history, that the bureaucracy's investment in Indonesia is still troubled. Starting from licensing, land acquisition, the Division of dividends investor and wrote many aspects still need to be addressed. Very unfortunate North Tapanuli Regency yg keep so many yg geothemal point is yg energy cheap and environmentally friendly should be abandoned because the conflict investors solely. Previous research by geolistrik and Siariaria in the region of the geomagnetic Sipoholon alone can produce geothermal with 300-400 megawatts of power, not to mention other areas around Sarulla yg not far from Lake Toba obviously store energy abundant yg to be processed. As a comparison, Indonesia currently has 15 units of PLTP Geothermal with total power range under 1,000 MW, spread ranging from Lumajang, Salak, Dieng, Kamojang, Darajat, Lahendong (Sulawesi), Sibayak (Sumatra), etc. definitely not worth the total geothermal point imaginable in North Tapanuli. Besides geothermal wells in North Tapanuli relatively shallow so it doesn't cost more expensive for excavation. Currently recorded almost 50 point geothermal yg scattered North Tapanuli Regency with the power of an average of 200 Megawatts. And when everything can be processed with good then we can count in visible all PLTP in Indonesia clearly could not rival the North Tapanuli in geothermal power. For that we say that very decent Sarulla geothermal Indonesia is the largest in the world even. Electric Sarulla Ready Distributed Next December (Personal Documentation) during my visit saw the construction project has been running almost 90% and if there are no constraints, then the PLTP phase I 2016 will begin this coming December, operated its inauguration will be done by the President of the Jokowi. We can only wait hopefully Sarulla Geothermal can be the greatest match his destiny.
