Yokogawa's Indonesian subsidiary has won an order from PT Pertamina Geothermal Energy to replace the control systems for the steamfield above-ground system at the Lahendong geothermal power plant in North Sulawesi province. The plant runs six generating units and can produce 120 megawatts, which the company says makes it one of the largest geothermal stations in Indonesia.

The scope is narrower than the headline suggests. Yokogawa will supply its CENTUM VP integrated production control system and a set of wireless and wired transmitters and flowmeters for the steamfield serving units one to four, and will handle engineering, installation, commissioning, operator training and systems integration. When the work is done, the steamfield and the generating units are meant to be controlled as a single system.

Why controls matter in a corrosive plant

Geothermal steam carries corrosive gases, and the equipment that handles it has to survive them, which is why the instruments, and not only the software, are part of the order. Unlike wind or solar, a geothermal plant produces a steady output regardless of the weather, and in a grid adding more variable renewables, that steadiness has value of its own.

The context is a national target. Pertamina Geothermal Energy says its working areas hold about 88 per cent of Indonesia's installed geothermal capacity, and the government wants the country's total to rise from roughly 2,100 megawatts to 8,000 megawatts by 2030.

An order for control systems is a modest step towards that, and Yokogawa's own framing is careful: its vice president Koji Nakaoka describes Indonesia's geothermal potential as still large. Whether drilling and finance can move as fast as the target is a question about geology and capital, not about instrumentation, and the release does not address it.