Electricity state company builds submarine cable project

State electricity company, PT Perusahaan Listrik Negara, is building submarine electricity cable between neighboring islands of Batam-Bintan in the Riau Islands province. The project would cost an estimated 431 billion IDR including 47.5 billion IDR for overland cable to the capital city of Tanjungpinang,PT PLN Nur Pamudji said here on Thursday. 

"PT PLN cooperated with Viscas Corporation of Japan and PT Karya Mitra Nugraha in installing the submarine cables", Pamudji said. 

The project to transmit power from Batam to Bintan, is expected to be completed in mid 2014 or 14 months after the signing of the contract. Pamudji said building the submarine cable was more efficient than building own power plant on Bintan, as the power requirement on the island was relatively small. 

Bintan needed only 43 megawatts of power in day time and a little more at night, he said. PLN will buy the power from PT PLN Batam its subsidiary on Batam to be distributed to Tanjungpinang on Bintan, only a few miles south of Singapore. 

Pamudji said PT PLN had no plan yet to export power to Singapore, saying the construction of submarine cables had nothing to do with any plan to export power to the neighboring country. Even if export is to be made it would not be through the Batam-Bintan cables, which has limited capacity, he said.

The head of PT PLN at Batam, Dadan Kurniadipura, said his company would build a number of power plants to supply power to Bintan including a gas fired power plant at Tanjunguncang with a capacity of 120 MW and a coal fired power plant at Tanjungkasam . 

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