Antara News·Indonesia·Wednesday, September 16, 2026 at 01:42 PM

Govt prepares replacement power for El Nino-hit Sulawesi hydro plants

Translate

Putu Indah Savitri, Yashinta Difa

Jakarta (ANTARA) - The Energy and Mineral Resources (ESDM) Ministry, in coordination with state utility PT PLN, is preparing replacement power sources for hydroelectric power plants in South Sulawesi currently affected by severe El Niño-induced drought.

"South Sulawesi relies on several hydropower plants. Due to El Niño, water availability—and thus generation capacity—has decreased," ESDM Minister Bahlil Lahadalia stated after a working meeting with Commission XII of the House of Representatives (DPR RI) at the Parliament Complex in Senayan, Jakarta, on Wednesday.

He explained that the government and PT PLN is actively mitigating the reduced capacity by securing temporary alternative power sources.

"We have found a solution, which is to temporarily substitute them with other power plants," Bahlil said.

PT PLN President Director Darmawan Prasodjo detailed that prolonged drought conditions have severely impacted key facilities, including the Poso, Bakaru and Malea hydroelectric plants, as well as several mini-hydropower plants (PLTM).

Darmawan noted that aggregate generation output from these hydropower facilities dropped sharply from approximately 850 megawatts (MW) to 250 MW—a total reduction of 600 MW.

The grid deficit was further compounded by technical delays during maintenance work at the privately-owned Jeneponto steam power plant, which has a capacity of 2 x 100 MW.

To overcome the supply constraints in the Southern Sulawesi power system, PLN is implementing several parallel recovery measures.

In addition to accelerating plant repairs, PLN is optimizing existing facilities and preparing an additional 627 MW of generation capacity.

The utility is also collaborating with local governments and the Regional Leadership Coordination Forum to execute cloud-seeding through weather modification technology to stimulate rainfall over plant catchments.

“We aim to gradually restore the balance between electricity supply and demand in the Southern Sulawesi (Sulbagsel) by the end of September 2026. We are monitoring and evaluating the process on a daily basis,” Darmawan stated.

For long-term energy security and system resilience, PLN plans to reinforce the Sulbagsel grid in alignment with the President's 100 GW solar initiative by adding approximately 5.2 gigawatt-peak (GWp) of solar power capacity alongside 8.2 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS).

View the original on Antara News →

KioskNews shows a cleaned-up reading view extracted from the publisher’s page — the original always lives on their site, not ours.