Indonesia's PLN to build biomass production facility

A unit of Indonesian state-owned utility PLN will build a biomass production facility in Medan city, North Sumatra province, to support the group's coal-biomass co-firing efforts.

The pilot project, under PLN Indonesia Power (PLN IP), is in partnership with the city government. The project will use Medan's solid waste, which is typically dumped at garbage dump TPA Terjun, to produce 16 t/month of biomass. The biomass will have a nominal caloric value of 3,400 kcal/kg.

The produced biomass will be used at PLN's 840MW Pangkulan Susu coal plant located in Pasir, North Sumatra and will account for 3pc of the power plant's fuel needs. The Pangkulan Susu coal plant is one of the main baseload power plants for North Sumatra, supplying 29pc of the electricity needs in North Sumatra. The use of biomass co-firing on a must-run baseload power plant would result in lower emissions compared to biomass cofiring in peaking power plants, PLN said.

PLN has been implementing biomass co-firing in many of its coal plants, as part of the company's efforts to lower emissions. It has implemented co-firing at 43 of its coal plants in 2023, consuming 1mn t of biomass over the course of the year, reducing carbon emissions by 1.05mn t to date. It plans to expand it to 52 coal plants by 2025.

By Antonio delos Reyes