French developer HDF has signed a memorandum of understanding with Indonesian state-owned energy company PLN to roll out its hydrogen power plant technology in the country.

HDF’s technology stores renewable electricity as hydrogen, which is then used to generate dispatchable power for the grid. “Our ‘Renewstable’ plants could assist Indonesia to decarbonise its grids while accompanying the government’s agenda to support eastern Indonesia’s development. Our project pipeline will put Indonesia at the forefront of green hydrogen projects in Asia,” says Mathieu Geze, HDF’s director for Asia.

Like Indonesia’s government, PLN targets net-zero emissions by 2060. The firm generates half of its power from coal and around 30pc from gas but aims to increase the share of renewables in its energy mix to 32pc by 2030, 60pc by 2050 and 69pc by 2060. As part of its strategy, PLN has partnered with companies such as Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and IHI to trial co-firing hydrogen and ammonia in existing gas and coal power plants.

“Indonesia is facing unique constraints due to its archipelago context” Geze, HDF

The latest agreement with HDF marks a “new era to materialise the development [of] renewable energy baseload 24 hours, coming from multiple resources including hydrogen”, says PLN president-director Darmawan Prasodjo. “We also expect that the PLN and HDF collaboration could elevate bilateral cooperation between Indonesia and France.”

A report published by the IEA last year notes that Indonesia has strong solar power potential, which could be utilised to produce green hydrogen at $1.7/kg by 2050. However, it adds that this will depend on a rapid fall in levelised cost of solar over the coming decades. Capital costs for utility-scale solar projects in Indonesia are higher than for equivalent projects in South Africa, Brazil, China and India, mainly due to “persistent uncertainty around the tariff for renewables” and slow permitting processes. The IEA anticipates that if capital costs for Indonesian projects were to fall to the average level in OECD countries, the levelised cost of solar would drop by 40pc.

Additionally, while the country has hotspots for wind and solar energy, many of these are far from energy demand centres, necessitating development of storage and transmission capacity. “Indonesia is facing unique constraints due to its archipelago context,” says Geze.

However, the IEA notes in its report that high-voltage direct current transmission lines linking regions will be a more effective system than piping or shipping hydrogen. Although the last two of those options have lower capital costs per megawatt-hour of delivered energy, the IEA calculates that they would only have a round-trip efficiency of 40pc compared with a transmission line system’s efficiency over 90pc.

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Author: Polly Martin