An academic review on the performance of the Sidrap wind turbine, Sulawesi – Indonesia

Abstract

Abstract To secure the energy availability in Indonesia, the Government of Indonesia has tried to find new contributions from the renewable energy resources, one of them is the wind energy. In 2018, a new wind farm in Sidrap, Sulawesi, started to operate and was expected to generate 75 MW electricity from 30 wind turbines in the farm. However, the performance of this wind farm has been criticized by some popular figures in Indonesia, including the Minister of Finance of Indonesia who mentioned its performance as under expectation. On the other side, the Indonesian National Electricity Company (PLN) has reported some data on mass media indicating that this wind farm is producing as expected. To understand the critics, an academic review based on the standard knowledge in wind energy theory has been done. The study includes the review of wind speed in Sidrap, the maximum expected power from the wind turbines, and some other evaluations. It is expected that the critics can be understood in a fair way and be a lesson learned for the future wind farm development in Indonesia.