Kamojang (Part 01)

She is one of the most beautiful creature i have ever met. Her height is about 1730 metres (about 100 times than mine!). She is not only physically beautiful, but also have a huge advantage for human’s life. She is really hot than you thought and also cold at the same time, i can’t even stand a chance beside her!. Hence, I actually able to visit her whenever i want, since she is not able to move. She lies as one of  the Mount Guntur peak’s. Her name is Kamojang.

How do i end up meeting with her ? Our first companionship begun at June 2012 when i got a chance of internship from PT. Pertamina Geothermal Energy (PGE). The company is one of renewable energy corporate which provide an electricity sources from geothermal energy. The overall process is quite simple, human only need to ‘mining’ the steam from deep under the ground, distribute them to power plant and voila! The lights are ON!.

My reason to choose geothermal topic is because i like it. That’s all. Generally, i really likes the topic about energy and its conversion, specifically renewable. I think we should produce the energy from them more. Since, if we only hoping conventional fuel (especially on oil) could support human's sustainability growth, they are not feasible anymore. Technically, oil and gas are also renewable, but it will takes a very long time until it produced, despite also the complexity of producing them.

I take my internship for 4 weeks. My mission is to learn and study how is geothermal energy had been ‘digged’ to the earth’s surface and distribution of dry steam to Power plant. I am under supervision of Operation and Production Units. My supervisor is Mr. Sidiq Nurbiyantoko, his position is Senior Engineer and his background is Mechanical Engineering. Since my background is chemical / process engineer, geothermal topic is such an interesting topic. Here in indonesia our background (chemical / process) more likely to be directed for an oil and gas production or petrochemicals instead.

PT. Pertamina Geothermal Energy provides a dry steam to power plant. The power plant itself divided into two types, internal power plant (Pertamina Geothermal Energy own a 60 MW capacity of power plant) or external power plant (the third party). At Kamojang, PT. Pertamina Geothermal Energy (PGE) supplied dry steam to PT. Indonesia Power. Thus, I have been asked by my supervisor to evaluate the pressure drop from wellhead on production pipeline toward the turbine of Pertamina’s Power plant. The task will be developed for sounding his result to provide a modification on some pipeline.

Great!, now i have a new places, a new topic, a new company, a new ‘job’ and much much new experiences that i will face. I may not only excited of them, i am THRILLED!. For the first couple days, my body still require an adaption of its height. My breathe begun shorter and i also got cold several times. But that’s kind of challenge didn’t make me shrunken. It was like i am having a ‘fire’ burning inside my body, flew through the vein along with blood. (continue)