Indonesia’s state-owned power utility, PT PLN (PLN), recently issued two pre-qualification tenders inviting bidders to apply for inclusion in the list of selected developers (DPT) for solar PV and bioenergy (biomass and biogas) projects. Once developers pass the prequalification process, they will be eligible to be invited to participate in future PLN bids. If a developer wants to be included in the DPT for both solar PV and bioenergy projects, it has to bid for both the prequalification processes. The invitations issued by PLN confirm that a DPT will be valid for three years.
Prior to this, PLN had held a prequalification process for renewable developers in 2019, for renewable energy projects across eight sources – solar PV, hybrid energy, wind, biomass, biogas, biofuel, tidal, and new energy projects. Unlike the present tender, developers could apply for just one prequalification process and could be included in the DPT for all eight types of projects. The utility carried out another prequalification process in mid-2020 specifically for hydro projects.
Indonesia has set a target of achieving 23 per cent share of renewables in the total primary energy supply by 2025 and of 31 per cent by 2030. In early 2020, Indonesia announced plans to issue a presidential regulation on a feed-in tariff system in a bid to boost investment in its renewable energy sector. The feed-in tariffs will offer renewable power plant developers a fixed electricity price for 12 years. In January 2020, PLN signed a power purchase agreement with Masdar to develop the country’s first floating PV plant with a capacity of 145 MW.