29 June 2010

DG Suspected for Corruption

Just got a shocking news today. Anti Corruption Commission has made the DG of DGEEU as the suspect in the corruption case at DGEEU. It is suspected he and one other suspect has marked up the price in the tender of solar home system project back in 2007-2008. 

I have heard many versions of this mark up. One says that old-non broken SHS systems was bought back from the villagers at very cheap price and sold at much higher price. Other say that the contractor won some projects but only one or two are reported. The rest is just money and never been applied in the field. It's just some options that I heard and understood. I guess there are many other strategies to cheat the government budget.

As far as I observe, those that are managing projects at DGEEU are now being very careful and try not to break the law. They already understood the consequences. Before the KPK's latest decision, there are many of DGEEU staffs that were interviewed by KPK. Some were interviewed more than 10 hours. I guess it was from them that KPK can come to above conclusion. I hope with this, DGEEU will be better and I hope the new DG will be even better than DGEEU.

The news can be found in this link (bahasa)

18 June 2010

Measuring "Greeness" of a Company

I was on a drive to a meeting when my colleague mentioned that Mercedes has just revealed its new car. The conversation develops to why Mercedes is able to sell a car at higher price. At the same level of technology (i.e. less emission per mile driven) or better Mercedes sell the car at higher price. This means to reach the same income level, Mercedes only needs to sell fewer cars than Toyota or Honda. If the car is driven for the same distance then emission per monetary unit paid to get the car is less for Mercedes. It seems the Mercedes is greener than the other two.

15 June 2010

Official - Electricity Tariff Increase July 2010

BASIC ELECTRICITY TARIFF WILL BE INCREASE BY 10% IN JULY 2010.

It is already in the news that Government of Indonesia will increase the basic electricity tariff by 105 in July 2010. By doing this, the government can reduce the subsidy up to IDR 800 billion per month and thus can reduce government spending and avoid budget deficit. I personally say this is a good news. I might have higher electricity bill next August, however this is a real momentum for energy efficiency measures. Government should and must make bigger campaign on energy efficiency and conservation. More news in Detik Finance (in bahasa).

PLN Says - Free Electricity for Poor People

Director of PLN mentioned this idea to provide free electricity for poor consumers. Poor consumers according to his definition are those who have 450 VA connections. According to his calculation, PLN will only lost IDR 1.5 trillion if electricity is free for poor consumers. His argues that if the new tariff is applied PLN will profit IDR 20 trillion from richer consumers. If tariff is applied and no exceptions are made PLN will profit roughly IDR 40 trillion. 

Opinions are divided into two groups. Those that are supporting the idea say that all other state owned companies should also do that as social obligation. Those who against the idea say that such thing will only create complex conditions, opening more holes for corruption, making PLN suffers from lost (despite calculation above) and many other reasons.

10 June 2010

Energypedia.info - new renewable energy portal

The global energy program called Energizing Development or EnDev was initiated approximately 3 years ago by the Dutch government. It is also basically a cooperation program between Dutch government and German government. The target of EnDev is giving energy access to approximately 10 million people before 2015 (target year of MDG). EnDev is implemented by GTZ and operating in 19 developing countries in the world and active in four main areas of activities namely: energy for cooking, energy for household, energy for social infrastructure, and energy for productive use.

8 June 2010

Special Allocation Fund - Model for Rural RE Implementation

In the recent years government of Indonesia spent lot of money to electrify rural areas. There are many programs such as decentralization fund support, energy independent village, rural electrification, energy facility support from Ministry of Under Developed Areas, and also Kecamatan Development Project (KDP) project under Ministry of Internal Affairs. Beside those major programs there are smaller projects by local governments, non government organizations and other government institutions.

In short, there are many models of implementation and so far there is no evidence of the best implementation model that can be used by many and replicated easily. Implementation model applied by NGOs usually are close to ideal however the success rate is also questionable since there is not enough information. Quite ideal here means there is a combination of top down and bottom up approach. The level of community involvement is usually also quite high and there is specific activity to facilitate the community to be ready with the new installation. Government's implementation model varies between implementing Ministries. The common characteristics of government's approach are top down, little community participation, and lack of monitoring and supervision.

7 June 2010

Interesting Banner - Anti Graft Banner

I found this banner this morning when I arrived to the office. My office is actually in a government building and this banner looks like a campaign to me. Showing this banner proves that there is something wrong in their system. There must be something wrong, if not they will not put the banner.

Indonesia is among the most corrupt countries according to transparency international. The corruption index is 2.2 and at the same level as Iraq (which as you know are in war, which makes corruption quite reasonable). I guess this shows how the government looks like. Despite (maybe) quite high economic development, there is still lack of character development. It is true that money or something like that corrupts the character of people.

4 June 2010

Basic Hydro Power - Part 4

Understanding the principle of head and flow and the importance to get correct data of them, then it is time to know more about components of a scheme. The basic components of a micro hydro scheme is illustrated below (source: MHP Scout Guide, GTZ Ethiopia).

3 June 2010

First Fly to Europe

Garuda eventually flew to Europe on the 1st of June 2010. The flight was the first flight after the ban was lifted last year. Only two airlines from Indonesia are allowed to fly in the European sky and one of them is Garuda (the national carrier). Garuda flew to Amsterdam and I guess this is not with any reasons. After almost 350 years colonizing Indonesia, the Netherlands is the only country in Europe that has closest historical ties with Indonesia. I guess it is easier for Indonesia to fly to the Netherlands rather than to other European countries.

2 June 2010

Yahoo! Pipes

My project is currently developing a website. This website is intended to be semi static one since we are not going to update it each and every single day. Our optimistic update frequency will be once every month although if things happen we can also update it in between. However it feels not too good to have a "static" website. Therefore we are thinking of how to make quite frequent updates but not making us busy updating. RSS feed is the key. We might include news from the sector (especially electricity sector) to be included in the website. The next question is then how to filter the RSS feeds that match to our criteria?

There are many options but for now I am trying Yahoo! service which is called Yahoo! Pipes.

1 June 2010

Basic Hydro Power - Part 3

Suddenly you have to measure the head of a water stream. What kind of method would you use? Before answering such question, let's go back a little bit and review the map. With a quite detailed map someone can determine which position is best for the intake and power house and other components of the plant The planner has to draw a sketch and put the rough layout of the power plant on the map. The map should be quite detail (1:25000 scale might do). From the map, one can make an approximation of the head. Measuring in the field will verify the approximation.

Fuel Subsidy - Vol II

Just after big discussion about subsidized fuel consumption, the price of non-subsidized fuel is going down. The price of non subsidized fuel is in the range of IDR 6400 to IDR 7400 per liter. The price is attached to international crude oil price, therefore there is always a chance that the non-subsidized fuel price to be higher or lower. If the crude oil price goes down extremely, the price of non subsidized fuel might also be very close to the price of subsidized fuel (i.e. IDR 4500 per liter).

In this case why don't the government also attached the subsidized fuel price with the international crude oil price?