Padang, the capital city of West Sumatra in Indonesia, has experienced major power outage repeatedly every year since 2006, typically causing people to experience 4–12 hours without electricity per day. The area is mainly supported by three lake-based hydro power plants, Maninjau, Singkarak, and Batang Agam. The electrical supply problems appear during the dry season when water availability is limited. Power outage during dry season in Padang area also becomes inevitable because the Sumatra island electricity system is a 150 kV interconnection power grid and due to the limitation of the transmission power transfer capacity lines from the Southern part of Sumatra (max for 250 MW) the demand cannot be satisfied. This paper presents the 2012 data of power outage and power production in Padang area. Using PVsyst software, a simulation of 200 MW solar PV systems in the Padang location is studied. Three scenarios are described, the current conditions without solar PV, with solar PV, and with solar PV-hydro collaboration. The results show that solar PV-hydro collaboration reduces the power outages significantly and distributes it more uniformly for the 2012 data.

Volume Subject Area:
Photovoltaics
Topics:
Photovoltaic power systems, Simulation, Solar energy, Collaboration, Computer software, Energy generation, Lakes, Power grids, Power stations, Water
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