(Paper presented at the International Seminar for Sustainable Decentralized Rural Electrification, organized by the Agence de I'Environment et de la Maitrise de I'Energie, Paris, France, in Marrakech, Marocco, 13-17 November 1995.
As rural electrification concerns populations with lower income and dispersed over the country's territory with low demand, the costs are often higher than the revenues expected from the sales of elctricity, at least during the initial years. However, introducing rural electricity, also to isolated areas, is in the interest of many:households in need of a better standard of living, goverments striving to reach a proper economic balance between urban and rural areas and hence also to steam rural exodus, and international communities wishing to avoid global imbalances in population and wealth. In 1994 the total number of villages in Indonesia amounted to 60,344 of which electricity;according to the current plan a village electrifivation ratio of 100 percent will be reached in 2004. Due to Indonesia's geographic characteristics as an archipelago, not all villages will be connected to a grid, and about 2,800 villages will have to be electrified by decentralized systems. An attempt in made to look at some issues concerning sustainable decentralized rural electrification, involving socio-economic impacts, environmental concers, financial and organizational problems and also experience with a few decentralized rural electrification schemes. by. Abdul Kadir; Professor, University of Indonesia, Jakarta.
