The Potential of Delivering Clean Locally Available Limitless Rice Husk Energy in the Celebes Island Indonesia

Abstract

Listen

Translate article

For the Celebes Island, the world's eleventh-largest island laying in the eastern part of Indonesia, consisting of six developing provinces, inhabited by around 19 million populations, the energy availability seems still to be a challenge. Depending merely on the conventional fossil sources, to cope with this challenge, should be less appropriate as their limitation and detrimental environmental impacts. The role of these unclean conventional limit power sources can be potentially shifted into an alternative clean sustainable energy generation based on locally available rice husk. The aim of this study is to assess the potential, the environmental aspect and the economical attractiveness on the application of rice husk as the electricity generation in the Celebes Island. It proposes a model of a direct boiler combustion power plant model based on the rice husk biomass, combined with the statistical data on the annual paddy production obtained from the Department of Agriculture to assess the energy potential. The environmental assessment is conducted by calculating the lifecycle carbon-dioxide equivalent and the economical assessment is performed by employing the model of the Levelised Cost of Energy (LCOE). The result shows that the potential of the rice husk energy in this island is around 815 GWH annually under the proposed power plants, around ten percent of the current electricity use. The potential of the carbon dioxide emission generated by the proposed biomass power plants is less than five-percent of the total carbon dioxide emitted by current power plants installed. At a low feedstock cost, a low installation costs and a low discount rate, it is possible to obtain the LCOE of the biomass lower than the electricity production costs of some existing power sources, the electricity price under subsidy and the biomass purchased price under a government regulatory (Feed-in-Tariff (FIT)).