'Black-out' costs hotels, restaurants

Dicky Christanto, The Jakarta Post, Denpasar

Rolling blackouts imposed by state utility company PLN had caused significant losses to hotels and restaurants in Bali, a trade association official said Saturday.

The temporary, rotating electricity cut-offs started Thursday after rough seas disrupted shipments of coal and oil to major PLN plants in Java.

The disruption reduced resort island's electric supply to 100 megawatts. Normal supply is around 562 MW, with some 200 MW of it coming from power plants in Java.

Officials at the PLN's Bali branch said the blackouts were the worst energy crisis the island had ever faced.

Head of the Badung chapter of the Indonesian Hotel and Restaurant Association, Ferry Markus, said that restaurants and non-star hotels suffered the most from the event.

The non-star hotels reported steep increases in operational costs after the black-out forced them to generate their own power supply using privately owned generators.

Almost every hotel in Bali is already equipped with an electric generator. But hotel owners -- particularly at the smaller hotels -- were complaining about the high costs of keeping them running, he told The Jakarta Post on Saturday.

Hotel generators run on diesel fuel which is subsidized by the government and costs between Rp 4,250 to Rp 4,500 per liter. However, by law these businesses aren't eligible for subsidized fuel and have to purchase it at prices that are 40 percent higher.

The purchase of diesel fuel alone had seriously impacted daily operational costs said Ferry.

"The electric generator was designed to be a temporary source of energy and not as a main power supply. When hotels have to run their generators 24 hours a day, the noise starts to bother even the most patient guests, and this is what is happening."

Small non-star hotels make up the bulk of the association's 2,000 member hotels.

The island's restaurants suffered even worse losses, according to the official.

As many restaurants don't have generators, food stocks were quickly destroyed when the power cuts occurred.

While the association hadn't finished compiling reports from its members, Ferry said there were preliminary indications the losses would be significant.

"We don't blame the government over this power shortage. We understand it was caused by bad weather. But, we also hope the government will take the matter seriously to keep it from happening again," he said.

"We expect the current crisis will be over soon because the industry simply can't sustain further losses (on this scale)."

Separately, Bali Governor Dewa Made Beratha said the local administration and PLN planned to build a power plant in Gerokgak region, Buleleng regency, around 140 kilometers northwest of Denpasar.

The 450 MW power plant, he said, would be able to meet the island's increasing demand for electric power and alleviate the need to ration power supplies in the future.

"Once it operates, we can even send electricity to Java," he said Friday.

Construction would begin this year and the plant was expected to come online by the end of 2009, he said.

The local administration was also mulling proposals for wind, solar and water-powered energy plants, he added.