TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - PT Perusahaan Listrik Negara (PLN), or the national electricity company inked an MoU with Abu Dhabi national energy company TAQA to develop transmission grid interconnection and smart grid in Indonesia.

The signing was conducted by the Executive Director of PLN Darmawan Prasodjo and the Group CEO and Managing Director of TAQA Jasim Husain Thabet on the sidelines of COP28 in Dubai on Monday, Dec. 4, 2023.

In facing the energy transition, Darmawan said, adjusting the location between renewable energy and energy demand is necessary as a key to reaching a harmonious supply and demand.

Thus, he said, green enabling transmission must be designed and developed. "The first thing to study is how we map the perspective of the energy modeling system and designing a [proper] green enabling transmission," Darmawan said in a statement on Dec. 11, 2023.

PLN and TAQA are pushing for energy transition acceleration by developing transmission and interconnection networks and the implementation of smart grid technology. That will allow an effective and stable management of the renewable energy distribution.

"There are corridors from Sumatra to Java, a corridor in Sulawesi, a corridor from Kalimantan to Java, and the corridor from NTT to Java," he said. "We will build a state of the art of smart grid technology, including flexible generation, and the smart control design dispatch center."

Darmawan added that this cooperation is not based on regions, but a global one. Thus, PLN is pushing for collaboration with various stakeholders to develop the smart grid technology including with the Global Power System Transformation Consortium or G-PST.