Geothermal Medium Temperature Resources in Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia

Low to Medium temperature geothermal resources in ASEAN spreads not only in Indonesia and Philippines, but in almost all ASEAN countries, including all of IMT-GT countries (Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand). This potential was revealed at a webinar Promoting Sustainable Energy in the Subregion: Exploration & Utilisation of Low-Medium Geothermal Resources for GHG Reduction on 28 April 2021, organized by Centre for IMT-GT Subregional Cooperation (CIMT) in collaboration with IMT-GT Working Group on Environment (WGE) and NewQuest Geotechnology (NQ-Indonesia).

In his presentation, Mr. Ibrahim Ariffin, Director (Energy Analyst) Sustainable Energy Development Authority (SEDA) Malaysia said that Malaysia has 305 MW Geothermal potency in Ulu Slim, Perak (162 MW) and Tawau, Sabah (143 MW). In Tawau, 1 drilling has been done with bottom hole temperature around 200 degrees Celcius. Ibrahim also explain that Geothermal as Renewable Energy resources has been gazette in the Renewable Energy Act 2011 & is supported under Feed-in-Tariff mechanism.

Mr. Mahippong Worakul, Senior Professional Geologist at Department of Groundwater Resources said that Thailand has 16 geothermal prospects distributed in the Northern Thailand (13 prospects) and Southern Thailand (3 prospects). Study in geothermal resources in Thailand started in 1979, targeting the producing of electricity using pressure from hot steam. After 30 years, the local authority turned the project by permission of Electrical Generating Authority of Thailand (EGAT) and promoted for tourism instead and it has been successfully operated. In 1989, the similar project was successfully operated in Fang District, Chiang Mai Province. The 300 kilowatt (kW) of binary geothermal power plant was installed. The capacity now has been enhanced to 1.3 MW of electricity for local distribution grid line.

Indonesia has geothermal prospects distributed in 357 areas (PSDMBP, 2021). More than 250 prospects are categorized as low-moderate geothermal resources. Mr. Harris Yahya, Director of Directorate Geothermal Indonesia, said that base on geothermal road map, Indonesia has installed capacity target of 9,300 MW on 2035. Mr. Haris explained further about the government’s efforts to achieve these targets. The government’s efforts are implementing Government Exploration Drilling Program, Utilization of PISP fund (Infrastructure funding for Geothermal ) and GREM fund (Geothermal Resource Risk Mitigation), BUMN Synergy in geothermal development, and Optimization of resources in productive WKP by developing expansion and small-scale power plants (Salak 15 MW, Dieng 10 MW, Lahendong 5 MW, etc.).

In the end of the webinar, Dr. Yunus Daud, Founder of NewQuest Geotechnology, deliver best practice in geothermal exploration and utilization. He explained about innovation, technology, and experiences of NewQuest Geotechnology as Best Geothermal Exploration Services Company (IAGI Awards 2020) regarding geothermal exploration strategy. He also mentioned several future collaboration covering geothermal training courses, geoscientific evaluation, as well as developing geothermal resources and utilization database.