The Solartech Fair hosted in Jakarta demonstrated Indonesia’s renewable energy potential despite the small size of the solar market.
The event is the country’s largest green energy fair, and despite Indonesia’s relatively small solar market, the event highlighted the region’s growing interest in new solar investments.
“We believe that Indonesia is still in its early years and utility companies are now starting to develop their first solar projects,” said Jimmy Shen, brand manager of Chinese module maker JinkoSolar, adding that although the show attracts fewer visitors than other countries, there are still potential customers.
According to Lorca Wei, ASEN Marketing Manager of Chinese inverter manufacturer Sungrow, most Indonesian solar companies were present at the event. “We invited and met big customers at this fair, where we hope to get more visitors next year,” he said.
Growatt’s sales manager Anna Kang said pv magazine the event is an opportunity for the company to meet new and existing customers and at the same time present its new technologies. “We are among the top three inverter suppliers in this country and we will definitely be back at this show next year,” he said.
The event also demonstrated Indonesia’s attractiveness in solar module manufacturing. “We see the government is ready to transform the energy sector and the renewable energy industry,” said Elaine Zhu, chief marketing officer of Autowell, a supplier of solar power generation equipment in China. “We also already have a few customers here.”
Irene Li, sales manager of Mibet, a Chinese mooring system supplier, added that Indonesia is an interesting market for floating PV, with demand constantly increasing. “This event is a good platform to understand what Indonesia really needs.”
According to the International Renewable Energy Agency, Indonesia had approximately 211 MW of installed solar power capacity at the end of 2021. The agency estimates that the country can reach 66 GW of solar energy by 2030.
According to recent IESR data based on NREL Re Explore solar resource mapping, Indonesia has the technical potential to deploy up to 655 GW of cumulative rooftop electricity capacity.
