Speakers

Event Details

Ensuring universal, affordable and sustainable energy access is one of the biggest societal challenges of our time. Indonesia has a relatively high electrification rate, however over five million people and 14000 villages still lack access to electricity, especially in remote areas and islands. Decentralized, bottom-up approaches, such as solar home systems and microgrids, have emerged as a response to shortcomings of the centralized grid approach, but affordability, scalability and long-term sustainability remain a challenge. Technology innovation can address many of these challenges, but the economic and societal dimension are essential for sustainable adoption at scale. Lack of appropriate business models has been a key bottleneck in scaling and field sustainability of microgrids. Leveraging on productive energy users (small business and industry) is a way forward to both ensuring microgrids sustainability and unleashing economic development opportunities.

This panel discussion aims to create a dialogue between the Indonesian and Dutch stakeholders (academia, industry, government, NGOs, etc.) and throw a spotlight on the technical, business and societal challenges and opportunities of the off-grid electrification scene in Indonesia:

• Indonesian off-grid and decentralized renewable energy scene: national electrification plan, status and experiences;
• Technical challenges and opportunities: DC/AC microgrids, supply and demand match, power quality.
• Energy enabled economic development opportunities (e-mobility, agriculture) and Water-Energy-Food nexus

The discussion builds on the ongoing research and education collaboration between the Institut Teknologi Bandung (ITB) and University of Twente (UT) through several projects (SCENT project, ERASMUS+KA107 for exchange of staff between the UT and ITB, a newly granted ANRGI project within the Cooperation Indonesia-The Netherlands Call 2019).