Tolo in South Sulawesi will have the first large scale wind farm in the country by 2018. (Reuters Photo/Kacper Pempel)

Jakarta. As renewable energy sources slowly become the number one solution for power supply in remote areas of Indonesia, Tolo in South Sulawesi will soon have the first large scale wind farm in the country.

The wind power plant will consist of 21 wind turbines with a capacity to generate 60 megawatts, according to the agreement signed in September between state utility company PLN and developer Equis.

The turbines will be delivered by Danish wind turbine manufacturer, Vestas.

"We expect this project to be fully operative by the end of 2017 or early 2018," Jacob Stensdal Hansen, development counselor at the Embassy of Denmark said on Wednesday (05/10).

According to Hansen, the project is an icebreaker for future wind power development in Indonesia, especially after the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources announced that 110 gigawatts of power for the country could be generated from wind.

"There is a number of promising spots in south Papua and the coastal areas of Kalimantan and Sulawesi. These areas regularly have wind with speeds of up to 7 to 8 meters per second, but with modern wind technology even wind speed at 5 to 6 meters per second is fast enough to harvest for energy," Hansen said.

While projects of this kind require large funds, Hansen argued that the future of wind power blows strong, as seen in Denmark where in 2015, 42 percent of electricity was generated from wind power.

"The cost of renewable energy is going down, and the cost of solar power, for example, has gone down by 100 percent in a few years. Likewise wind power is price competitive, and currently onshore wind energy is the cheapest source of energy in Denmark," he added.