title: 100% Renewable Energy Integration in Indonesia
Creators: name: Silalahi, David
Publisher: name: The Australian National University
Year: 2025

description: Indonesia currently has the fourth largest population globally, with 280 million people, expected to reach 335 million by 2050. More than 80% of Indonesia's electricity is generated from coal and gas. Transitioning to clean energy is essential for Indonesia to meet its international climate commitment of net zero emissions. This thesis explores an affordable pathway to decarbonize Indonesia's energy system, focusing on the electricity system. This thesis found that Indonesia has abundant space for the deployment of enough solar power to meet this demand, including on rooftops, inland reservoirs, mining wastelands, and in combination with agriculture. The solar potential in Indonesia is found to be significantly larger than previously estimated and can surpass the potential demand. Notably, Indonesia has a vast maritime area that almost never experiences strong winds or large waves that could host floating solar capable of generating &gt;200,000 terawatt-hours per year. An extensive evaluation of suitable global maritime areas for the installation of offshore floating PV systems has been conducted. The selection of suitable areas for these systems is based on various factors such as maximum wind speeds, maximum wave heights, protected areas, and territorial considerations. The most promising regions for offshore floating PV are within 5-12 degrees of latitude of the equator, particularly in and around the Indonesian archipelago and in the Gulf of Guinea near Nigeria and neighboring countries. The annual energy generation potential could potentially reach around one million TWh. In this thesis, a systematic analysis was conducted to determine Indonesia's practical off-river PHES potential, which could support the country's transition to a decarbonized energy system. The analysis found 321 terawatt-hours (TWh) of pumped hydroelectric storage (PHES) volume in the lowest cost categories (A and B). This amount is significantly larger than what Indonesia would currently need if all its electricity came from solar and wind power. This thesis also identifies a selection of high-quality Pumped-Hydro Energy Storage (PHES) potential sites specifically chosen for Indonesia. These selected sites fall within the "A" cost classes, indicating favorable economic viability, and include greenfield, bluefield, brownfield, and ocean PHES atlases. This means that Indonesian energy planners can confidently implement large-scale solar generation, knowing that there are credible and technically advanced energy storage solutions available at a reasonable cost and with minimal environmental impact. In this thesis, a solar heat map was also created to identify suitable locations for solar farms in Indonesia. This map provides valuable qualitative and quantitative information to solar farm developers, land occupiers, and governments. It could help these parties find each other and speed up the process of site identification, benefiting all involved. The thesis examines the feasibility of achieving 100% renewable electricity in Indonesia. An hourly energy balance analysis, using ten years of meteorological data, was performed for a hypothetical solar-dominated Indonesian electricity system for the consumption of 3, 6, and 10 megawatt-hours (MWh) per capita per year, compared with the current consumption of 1 MWh per capita per year. Most of the energy supply is provided by solar, and pumped hydro energy storage primarily responsible for balancing supply and demand. The cost for a balanced solar-dominated system in Indonesia was found to be in the range of 77-102 USD/megawatt-hour. The findings of this thesis have sparked scholarly discussions and wider public engagement in various public forums, webinars, and media platforms. This thesis recommends future research to explore the electrification of transportation, heating, and industrial sectors in Indonesia and their impact on the electricity grid as these sectors mature.