SolarBoost

SolarBoost. British Council Newton Fund, Project No. 413871894. Boosting solar energy capacity of Indonesia without compromising protected areas: an integrated GIS tailoring solar energy resource and local information.

For more info contact, Dr Harold Ruiz (Head of Group)

Project Workpackages

• SolarBoost is a collaborative research project between Politeknik Negeri Pontianak (POLNEP) at Indonesia and the University of Leicester (UoL) at the UK. This work was supported by the Institutional Links grant, ID 413871894, under the Newton Fund Indonesia partnership. The grant is funded by the UK Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and the Indonesian Ministry of Research, Technology, Higher Education and delivered by the British Council. For further information, please visit www.newtonfund.ac.uk.
• The institutional link project is aimed to promote the massive development of solar power plants in Indonesia by comprehensive consideration of solar renewable energy share in the Indonesia energy mix. Since the country has relied on fuel generated electricity which has been a burden in the financial sector as well as the severe impact on the environment.

Achievements & Deliverables

• Solarboost project developed a web-enabled GIS package by integrating satellite retrieved data of solar irradiance, climatological conditions, and Indonesian local information such as topography, land cover, and usage, road, public facility, and electric network. Solarboost web map- GIS package useful for extracting, analyzing, and visualizing the GIS spatial data for developing large scale solar power plant planning in Indonesia to improve the green energy security, and a sustainable energy transition to solar renewable energy in the country. To achieve the targeted goal of the project, a case study at West Kalimantan Province has been considered.
• Developed a GIS package enabling the integration of satellite retrieved SSI data with Indonesian local information of demography, infrastructure, electric network, and land usage.
• Collection and processing of the spatial data and multi-criteria algorithms for analysis, visualization, and integration of local resources of information in Indonesia.
• Showcasing the potential site for exploiting the solar energy resources with GIS packages for solving energy-related problems Indonesia.
• A web-enabled GIS package SolarBoost focused on the easy visualization of satellite-retrieved data for SSI maps, tailored to the actual needs, conditions, and infrastructure of the WKP. The key derivatives of Solarboost including the web-enabled spatial maps and GIS layers created the first-ever SSI benchmark report aimed to enable an adequate inclusion of solar energy farms and energy policymaking in Indonesia with special focus to the WKP, where routes of grid development are respectful with the protection of natural resources and native communities. So far SolarBoost demonstrated the usefulness of GIS by performing multiple assessments of the power cost/benefits that could be derived from the installation of a solar farm at West Kalimantan (or any other Indonesian province), reporting the legal and infrastructure constraints that could affect its timely deployment.