A senior official at state power utility firm of PLN in West Kalimantan province said that it will increase power import from Malaysia in a bid to boost the economy in the country’s border areas with Malaysia, China’s Xinhua news agency said, quoting local media reports in Jakarta today.

Daniel Bangun, general manager of PLN in West Kalimantan, said that his office planned to add more power supply imported from Malaysia to Indonesia’s isolated regencies located around border areas with Malaysia, such as Sambas and Kapuas Hulu.

He said starting from next year his office would add power supply to Sambas regency up to 600KVA, makes total power supply to the regency increased up to 800KVA.

   

azlan Meanwhile, in Kapuas Hulu regency, the state firm planned to add 400KVA of power. Electricity in those two regencies has been supplied by the Sarawak Electricity Supply Corporation (Sesco) since 2009.

   

Besides that, PLN West Kalimantan also planned to import some 1,500KVA of power from the neighbouring country for Entikong subdistrict in Sanggau regency.

Daniel said that importing electricity from Malaysia is cheaper than self-producing it with diesel power generators.

The price of power from Malaysia was set at RM0.30, or equal to 1,000 rupiah (about US$0.10) per kilowatt hour (kWH). Meanwhile, one litre of diesel fuel in the province, priced at 8,000 rupiah (about US$0.80) can produce only 3kWH of electricity.  

“So it apparently has wide difference in the cost. In term of business this is the most suitable at the time being,” he said yesterday, as quoted by vivanews.com .

For the long-haul plan, he said that his office has planned a self-sufficiency power production in the province by constructing power plants with less-expensive production cost than diesel power generators.

- Bernama