To meet the fast-growing demand for electricity in the world’s biggest island nation is not a small challenge. Presently there are over 600 local grids operated by the state utility PLN to provide electricity to households, businesses and industry. Most of the power is generated with coal and in many smaller grids through costly diesel fuel. Presently Indonesia’s electricity consumption is far below world average with an annual consumption per capita and year of 1,000 kWh. Installed power capacity will have to rise several times over the next decades to improve economic development and quality of life. How to cover this demand in an economic and ecological way is the challenge ahead for Indonesia.

The Indonesian Government has recognized the potential of renewable energy as a domestic and environmental friendly energy source which is widely available in the country. Therefore, it has set in its national energy plan a target to reach 23 percent of renewables by 2025. It is important to achieve this goal to cover future energy demand and essential to meet Indonesia’s com-mitment under the 2015 Paris Agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 29 percent by 2030.

However so far there is little experience in Indonesia how to integrate renewable energy into the numerous local grids and how to include them into power system planning. Especially there are concerns how to deal with the intermittence of solar and wind energy. To overcome these concerns and the numerous technical

administrative and regulatory challenges successful examples of grid integrations of renewables need to be demonstrated and scaled up. Against this background, the Directorate General of New Renew-able Energy and Energy Conservation (EBTKE), in cooperation with GIZ, acting on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), have decided to jointly implement the 1,000 Islands – Renewable Energy for Electrification Programme (REEP).