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  • Coal
4 October 2019

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  • Indonesia

What some are calling the largest coal-fired power plant in Indonesia should begin commercial operations in 2020, officials said.

The 2,000-MW Batang power plant is nearly completed, an official with Adaro Power told the Jakarta Post. The project is being built to deal with Indonesia’s looming electricity shortage, according to the company.

Indonesia government authorities are pushing a larger plan to add 35,000 MW of power to the national grid. Construction on the Batang plant began in 2017, according to reports.

It has faced both international environmental and local opposition, with some Batang villagers claiming human rights abuses and negative impacts on fishing.

Bhimasena Power Indonesia, a joint venture of Japanese firms Itochu Corp. and Adaro Power is the developer on the estimated $4 billion (U.S.) project in Central Java. Parent firm Adaro Energy is one of Indonesia’s largest coal companies.

Various researchers and news reports have forecast that coal-fired capacity in Asia will grow by more than 50 percent over the next few years. China, India, Japan, South Korea and Indonesia are a few of those nations adding coal-fired power plants.

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  • Others
4 October 2019

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  • Brunei Darussalam

PetroVietnam Drilling & Well Service Corporation (PV Drilling) has entered into a Contract for Provision of Heavy Tender Assist Semi-Submersible Drilling Unit PV DRILLING V with Brunei Shell Petroleum Company SDN BHD (BSP). The contract has the duration of six years, plus two (2) times of two (2) year extension with commencement date of 01st April, 2021 in Brunei Darussalam.
PV DRILLING V, which is the 8th TAD in the world, is the latest generation of its kind with state-of-the-art technology and could be considered the most modern TAD Rig with the SSDT 3600E HP design. In addition, PV DRILLING V is also the first design with high-tech applications that enables the Rig to work on the High Pressure High Temperature wells (HPHT) by its BOP control system that has working pressure up to 15.000 psi (equal approximately 1020 atm). The rig was completed in late 2011 and served for the drilling campaign of Bien Dong POC at Hai Thach – Moc Tinh field in early 2012 with a total of 16 drilling wells in deep water and offshore areas with extremely complicated and difficultly geological conditions. However, PV DRILLING V managed to complete the project prematurely, which assisted Bien Dong POC in saving time and reducing operation cost. During the whole project, the TAD has safely operated with operating efficiency of over 96%. This success has affirmed PV Drilling’s capability on mastering the technology and valuable experience of the rig’s technical staff.
The above contract not only helps to affirm PV Drilling’s capability in service provision but also offers PV Drilling an opportunity to provide BSP drilling services for the first time, especially brings job for the TAD rig. This is also the longest-term drilling contract PV Drilling has entered into. Taking this ocassion, PV Drilling will confirm and strengthen its presence in such an oil and gas strategic market as Brunei.
The first TAD in the world, named SSDT – 800, was built and developed by KFELS in 1994 and up to now KFELS has delivered such seven units with the latest model named SSDT 3600E, all of which have been deployed in both shallow and deep waters off Southeast Asia and West Africa. PV Drilling V is the 8th TAD in the world which is the latest generation of its kind with state-of-the-art technology and could be considered as the most modern Tender Assist Drilling Rig with the SSDT 3600E HP design. Developed by Keppel O&M’s Deepwater Technology Group (DTG), the KFELS SSDT 3600E design has revolutionized the way in which drilling tenders work, allowing them to be deployed next to deep water floating platforms for the first time.

  • Renewables
3 October 2019

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  • Vietnam

 

Vietnam’s latest attempt to draft new solar feed-in tariff (FiT) rates has come under fire for the absence of energy storage in its remit.

the plans involve reducing FiTs for ground-mount and floating PV after solar capacity deployment exceeded expectations under the original subsidy by a factor of five.

During the first FiT programme, which ran for two years up to 30 June 2019, all three PV segments – floating, ground mount, rooftop – had a generous FiT rate of US$9.35 cents/kWh lasting for 20 years.

But under the third set of draft plans proposed by the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MOIT) this week, the subsidy for ground-mounted projects will be reduced to US$7.09 cents and for floating solar to US$7.69 cents. Rooftop solar, however, looks set to get a pass by maintaining its US$9.35 cents rate. If this third draft is approved by the Prime Minister, the new FiT programme will run until 31 December 2021.

There are three issues with the new draft, Gavin Smith, vice chairman of Eurocham’s Green Growth Committee, told Energy-Storage.news. Firstly, the absence of a provision to incentivise solar-plus-storage is a “serious mistake”. Energy storage, which helps integrate PV to the grid, had been incentivised in the first draft, but the technology has been omitted once again in the third draft.

Secondly, Smith said the new rate for floating PV is “insufficient to incentivise investors to go to floating solar first”. This would be a missed opportunity given the inherent benefits of FPV on land use and grid integration – most reservoirs in Vietnam have hydro plants with excess transmission capacity already built-in.

Thirdly, despite the first draft incentivising solar to be located in regions with lower irradiance and where there is less grid congestion already, the new draft resorts back to a single national FiT. Smith said this would concentrate solar even more in the overloaded south of Vietnam, with no benefit to the national transmission system.

“Binh Thuan and Ninh Thuan Provinces are already overloaded,” Smith added. “It’s fully documented and not going away anytime soon. A single national price is going to exacerbate that.”

Again industry members see the addition of energy storage as a key factor in solving the grid constraint issues.

MOIT had expected around 850MW of installations by the end of the first FiT period up to June this year, but the high rate on offer led to a rush to enter the Vietnamese PV market, including many international companies, resulting in 4.5GW of deployment across 90 projects. This led to the now well-known grid congestions issues.

Industry members had warned as early as last year that large-scale projects were likely to cause grid congestion, particularly in the provinces of Ninh Tuan and Binh Tuan, where developers had been attracted by the highest irradiation levels in the country.

The deployment rush caused “overloading on the national grid at certain distribution lines and at certain period of day time”, said a MOIT release.

In the same release, Nguyễn Đức Cường, director of the National Load Dispatch Centre (EVN NLDC), said that while PV plants are being added to the national grid, congestion means that, against expectations, many plants are having to reduce capacity.

Investors have been notified of the overloading, but there are fears that should the overloading not be alleviated by necessary power transmission projects immediately, then both investors and the utility EVN will be negatively impacted. Site clearance for transmission projects was identified as one problem area, which could be resolved by greater collaboration between MoIT, local governments, investors and EVN.

On the plus side, Smith noted that MOIT had done well in its third draft of FiT changes to resist the temptation to reduce the FiT for rooftop projects, which are thriving across all segments.

The new FiT rates are expected to be approved imminently, said MOIT, but Smith said there is no guarantee that approval will come.

  • Others
3 October 2019

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  • Philippines

Philippines power utility Meralco and battery supplier Hitachi have installed a 2MW / 2MWh battery energy storage system (BESS) on the country’s largest island, Luzon, according to local reports.

Two 1MW lithium BESS units comprising 2,300 cells were reportedly unveiled on September 6 in San Rafael, a town 50 kilometres north of the capital, Manila.

The project has been in the works since late 2017, when the utility and the Japanese electronics giant signed a Memorandum of Agreement (MoA).

Meralco did not respond to Energy-Storage.News’ requests for comment, however one newspaper report was republished in full on the Philippines’ Department of Energy’s website.

A Hitachi spokesperson confirmed the reports but declined to make further comment.

The reports claim that the project is a pilot that will help the Philippines’ largest utility understand and further integrate battery storage technologies. It has been billed by backers as the country’s first grid-scale distribution-connected BESS.

The system will be connected to Meralco’s network via a substation to which a 3.8 MW solar farm is connected.

The Department of Energy circulated draft energy storage system guidelines in April this year that looked at how promote and regulate energy storage systems in the Southeast Asian state.

“The DOE recognizes the applications and the benefits of ESS as an emerging technology in the improvement of the electric power system in accordance to the objective of ensuring the quality, reliability, security and affordability of the supply of electric power,” the circular reads. Philippines’ generation companies may own energy storage systems, either as standalone facilities or integrated into existing generation, according to the guidelines. ESS systems can then be registered to participate in the wholesale electricity spot market.

The new BESS was installed just weeks before Meralco approved PHP424 million ($US8.2 million) of equity funding for 210MW of PV projects across Luzon.

Previous projects reported by Energy-Storage.news in the Philippines have been in more remote areas, generally with weak or non-existent grid connection. However, Aboitiz Power, one of the country’s larger power producers, teased in 2018 that it was planning a 48MW battery system. Meanwhlle Wärtsilä has declined to reveal the exact location of a 100MW / 100MWh hybrid power plant ‘pathfinder’ project that it is developing in Southeast Asia which will “leverage abundant wind and solar resources”.

  • Renewables
3 October 2019

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  • Indonesia

[JAKARTA] Indonesia’s far from done in its campaign to squeeze more value from its abundant natural resources, and its next target could be one of the most ubiquitous commodities of all.

President Joko Widodo on Wednesday said the resources powerhouse wants to process more crude palm oil domestically, which would mean it’ll export less of the raw material used to make everything from soap to chocolate.

Fewer shipments from the world’s biggest producer is going to crimp global supply just as demand is expected to pick up, and that’s going to be bullish for prices, according to Phillip Futures in Kuala Lumpur.

“We want crude palm oil to become processed goods. Why not? Or jet fuel or cosmetics, soap,” Jokowi said in an interview with Bloomberg’s Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait in his home town of Solo in Central Java. “The direction we’re going is we want to build a semi-processed or processed goods industry or downstream industry. No longer raw materials, we want added values.”

Jokowi’s mission to get more out of the country’s raw materials is already rattling metals markets. Earlier this year, the government brought forward a ban on exports of nickel ore by two years to January, threatening to remove hundreds of thousands of tons of the material from circulation and deepen a global deficit.

And while Jokowi, as the president is known, didn’t say he was considering a ban on shipments of crude palm oil, the prospect of more domestic processing, and potentially lower exports, is going to be felt far and wide. It’s especially going to hurt refiners in countries like India that rely heavily on shipments from Indonesia.

The country is the world’s biggest exporter of palm oil, accounting for more than half of global supply. It shipped about 34.7 million tons, or 73% of its output, abroad last year, mainly to India and China. About a third of that is in its crude, unrefined form, and the rest as processed oil.

Indonesia’s refining capacity stands at about 70 million tons per year, which means the country can comfortably refine up to 56 million tons, said Alvin Tai, an agriculture analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence.

Indonesia benefits from processing more of its trove of raw materials locally because it can make a bigger margin from exporting more refined products than the commodities in their most basic form. It’s like Saudi Arabia keeping more of its crude at home to refine into gasoline and then exporting that instead at a premium. The idea is to spur domestic investment, generating jobs and incomes for local communities.

“The move toward financing and increasing an Indonesian palm processed goods and downstream industry is in line with their commitment to increase domestic consumption,” said Marcello Cultrera, institutional sales manager at Phillip Futures in Kuala Lumpur.

The government has already said it intends to follow its ban on nickel ore exports with similar steps for other minerals such as bauxite and copper concentrate. The curbs are seen accelerating investments of $20 billion in smelters, stainless steel plants and electric battery units.

Jokowi said that part of the plan for palm oil would be to use more as an alternative to diesel in what’s known as palm-biodiesel. At the moment, the government mandates that diesel must contain 20 per cent palm-biofuel. Jokowi wants that to increase to 30 per cent and eventually to 100 per cent.

By doing so the country can reduce its reliance on imported petroleum and the impact of subsidy costs, while absorbing an excess supply of palm oil.

More broadly, Indonesia wants to follow Germany and China’s success in developing their domestic industry, Jokowi said. “We want to see how industrialization is in Germany, so can use it as an example,” he said. “We can also take a look at China. We want Indonesia to have a different type of industrialisation because Indonesia has different raw materials.”

Indonesia’s economy is projected to grow at its fastest pace in seven years in 2020, despite a deteriorating global outlook and rising risks of recession abroad. The economy is forecast to add 5.3% next year, according to assumptions approved by the Indonesian parliament last week.

One potential threat to that growth could be the massive wildfires that have been raging in parts of the country in recent weeks, causing a thick haze across Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore, causing flight disruptions and hurting production in palm oil and rubber plantations.

The central bank last month warned that, if they persist, the fires could hurt growth as the smoke disrupts the economy and businesses. The haze also causes respiratory illness for hundreds of thousands of people, putting children and unborn babies at risk.

Indonesia is committed to improving law enforcement and management of the fires, Jokowi said. Artificial rain has helped significantly lower the number of hotspots across the archipelago, authorities say.

Jokowi said another of his priorities is to increase the use of renewable energy.

“Every year we increase renewable energy use, such as geothermal, wind power, solar power and we reduce the use of coal,” he said. “The direction we’re going is in 2025 renewable energy use will reach 26 per cent. Now it has risen and at 13 per cent, more or less. We will continue to raise use of renewable energy.”

  • Others
3 October 2019

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  • ASEAN

The agreement will allow ADB and Infrastructure Asia to help state-owned enterprises, regional and municipal governments, in Southeast Asia in improving their institutional, financial, and governance capacities for developing innovative and green infrastructure programs and projects

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) and Singapore’s Infrastructure Asia today signed a cooperation agreement to help governments in Southeast Asia adopt innovative and green finance approaches to identify and develop bankable and sustainable infrastructure projects in the region, where the annual infrastructure investment needs total $210 billion until 2030.

The agreement was signed during the Asia Infrastructure Forum in Singapore by ADB Director General for Southeast Asia Mr. Ramesh Subramaniam and Executive Director Mr. Seth Tan for Infrastructure Asia, a Singaporean agency with the mandate of supporting Asia’s economic and social growth through infrastructure development.

“Southeast Asia faces significant financing gaps in meeting its infrastructure needs, including for climate change mitigation and adaptation costs,” said Mr. Subramaniam. “We need innovative financing approaches to mitigate risks in projects and better leverage public funds to catalyze more financing from private and institutional partners, support greener and cleaner development, and help solve critical development challenges.”

“Projects structured with better financial and technical elements, along with good partnerships, are key to helping improve the bankability of Asia’s sustainable infrastructure projects,” said Mr. Tan. “Through this collaboration with ADB, Infrastructure Asia will work in close consultation with the international financing, credit enhancement, and technology ecosystem in Singapore to improve municipalities and state-owned enterprises’ access to private capital.”

Specifically, the agreement will allow ADB and Infrastructure Asia to help state-owned enterprises, as well as regional and municipal governments, in Southeast Asia improve their institutional, financial, and governance capacities for developing innovative and green infrastructure programs and projects.

To achieve this, the two institutions will launch the Innovative Finance Lab for Sustainable Infrastructure, a virtual space supported by a biannual event in Singapore, to gather stakeholders across Southeast Asia together to exchange knowledge, improve their policy-making capacities, and foster the adoption of innovative and green finance models in local infrastructure projects.

The Innovative Finance Lab will also serve as a capacity-building platform for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ (ASEAN) Catalytic Green Finance Facility (ACGF), which was launched in April 2019 to boost the development of green infrastructure projects across ASEAN by catalyzing public and private capital and technologies. The ACGF is part of the Green and Inclusive Infrastructure Window, launched by Southeast Asian governments, ADB, and major development financiers under the ASEAN Infrastructure Fund, a regional financing initiative established in 2011 that has committed $520 million for energy, transport, water, and urban infrastructure projects across the subregion.

ACGF aims to mobilize around $1.3 billion from a number of sources, including the ASEAN Infrastructure Fund, ADB, the German development cooperation through KfW, the European Investment Bank, the Republic of Korea, and Agence Française de Développement. The facility is also supported by other entities, including the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, the Global Green Growth Institute, and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation.

ADB is committed to achieving a prosperous, inclusive, resilient, and sustainable Asia and the Pacific, while sustaining its efforts to eradicate extreme poverty. In 2018, it made commitments of new loans and grants amounting to $21.6 billion. Established in 1966, it is owned by 68 members—49 from the region.

  • Energy Cooperation
3 October 2019

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  • Philippines

MOSCOW, Russia — Russia has shown interest in engaging in energy cooperation with the Philippines, Manila’s top envoy here said.

In an interview with reporters on Wednesday, Philippine Ambassador to Russia Carlos Sorreta said the Philippines is “looking at” Russia to invest “in our energy sector setting up plants for natural gas” and “different steps to liquefy for our natural gas.”

“[In] conventional energy, you know Russia is a major player in oil, in gas. So there’s that…that’s what we’re looking at. But we’re looking beyond,” he said.

“We’re looking at supply also to bring down… ‘yung (to) increase sa (our energy) supplier[s]. [With very low] supplies, you can’t bring down [fuel] prices,” he added. “And we’re looking also—it’s still very early—ang (at) nuclear power na merong mga konting (and there are a few) talks [going on], trying to understand what Russia can do and what we are ready to absorb.”

Sorreta made the statement as President Rodrigo Duterte is embarking on his second visit to Russia, where he is set to hold a bilateral meeting with Russian President Rodrigo Duterte.

Asked if there is any possibility for Russian companies to carry out exploration in the Spratly Islands, Sorreta said: “I believe our policy is…you know that’s ours. If you want someone to have a contract with us, whether it’s Russian, it’s ours.”

“When it comes to exploring the private business, we’ll look at the bottom line of its profits. So we have to show and we have been ever since before… Kasi (Because) it’s ours eh. Parang huwag tayong mahihiya (Let’s not feel ashamed) ‘cause we’re trying to deal with our…the other contenders,” he said.

The Spratlys is a group of islands believed to hold oil and gas deposits.

The islands are claimed entirely or in part by Taiwan, Brunei, China, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam.

“Exploration of course at this point because we need to know what’s there before we can proceed to… And then they’re willing to do it within our laws,” Sorreta said.

“Well, they’re not a claimant. If they come in, it’s really in full recognition of our sovereign rights and our right to explore or not to explore, to explore, to not to exploit,” he added./ac

  • Renewables
3 October 2019

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  • Philippines

THE National Geothermal Association of the Philippines (NGAP) seeks the intervention of legislators in a bid to retain fiscal incentives for undertaking renewable energy (RE) projects amid the government’s push to rationalize perks for investors.

“We are in communication with our colleagues in the Congress… We will be visiting the Senate to make sure that the renewable energy incentives stay in place,” Joeffrey Caranto, NGAP president, said on Wednesday.

“We submitted a position paper in the Congress,” Caranto told reporters on the sidelines of the First Philippine International Geothermal Conference (PGC) held in Bonifacio Global City, Taguig on Oct. 2, 2019.

The conference seeks to expand and develop the country’s potential for geothermal energy being indigenous and sustainable resources.

The association is setting an appointment for an audience with Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian to discuss the matter, Caranto said.

NGAP, along with the Department of Energy (DoE), is advocating for the retention of RE incentives, saying fiscal perks are necessary to spur the development of nonconventional energy resources in the Philippines.

Some of the incentives under Republic Act 9513 or the “Renewable Energy Act of 2008” include a seven-year income tax holiday and tax exemptions for the carbon credits generated from RE sources; 10 percent corporate income tax; and 1.5 percent realty tax cap on original cost of equipment and facilities to produce renewables.

Currently, the Duterte administration proposes the rationalization of tax incentives. House Bill 4157 or the “Corporate Income Tax and Incentives Rationalization Act” (Citira), aims to reduce corporate income tax from 30 percent to 20 percent, adjust the period for the rationalization of incentives, and provide incentives for the proper behavior of firms.

“Nonconventional energy resources are closer to communities and located in lower elevation areas, so economically [speaking], mas madali siyang i-develop (such power plants are easier to develop),” Caranto said.

“If you look at conventional energy resources, they are so expensive. Permits are very difficult to obtain,” he added.

According to the NGAP official, who is also Energy Development Corp. (EDC) assistant vice president for exploration and growth, tariff is “obviously a big hurdle” to constructing RE facilities because the government has already removed feed-in tariff for geothermal as well as infrastructure expenditures. The official said, “Transmission lines, for example, are still up in the mountains.”

“For the last 15 years, wala na tayong masyadong nagiging developments with geothermal (For the last 15 years, we don’t have any developments yet in geothermal). We only have … the additional 62 megawatts in the last 15 years,” he said.

“We are in an advantageous position of possessing this valuable resource, and this conference is part of our goal to advance geothermal in our country’s energy mix as well as to make the Philippines a rightful regional and global leader in the sector,” Caranto said.

At present, according to NGAP, the country is the third largest geothermal energy producer in the world.

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