Indonesia is one of the coutry that face energy crisis problem, especially for household activity.  There are 3 main souce for household activity in Indonesia, kerosine, wood and LPG.  Kerosine have availability problem, it?s hard to find it.  Beside that, kerosine have an expensive and fluctuative price because conflict that hapen in produsen country.

            Wood also face availability problem, forest is the main source for wood but now there?s not much forest left, especially in some island such as Java.  Taking wood from forest is also decrease amount of tree and cause many environment problem.  LPG have bad record in Indonesia, because some case where they explode and hurt many people.  People became traumatic and afraid to use LPG.  But now, LPG became the main energy source for household activity because convertion program that government held.

            Looking those problem, BEC (student community in my college) try to socialize biopellet as new energy source for household activity.  A couple month ago, they held biopellet socialization in Cikarawang Village near my campus.  In the socialization, they give free biopellet (8 kg) and stove (biomass stove UB-03) to 12 responden.  Those student utilize agriculture waste that is rice hulks as the main substance for biopellet.  With this socialization, they hope people will change they energy source from traditonal source (wood, kerosine and LPG) into biopellet.

            But, is it right that biopellet better than LPG, wood or kerosine? Is there any problem by using biopellet?

            From 12 responden, 5 people say that biopellet is very useful and more efisien than wood, they also want to use biopellet again.  One person never use biopellet because he/she didn?t come when socialization.  The left 6 person use biopellet but not maximal.  In the other hand, most responden use biopellet until 2 weeks.  Some responden need more time to finish it because biopellet in wet condition.  If biopellet in wet condition, responden need to drying it with sunshine.

            Some complaint from responden came from ignition time, where it took so long.  Biopellet also need trigger such as alcohol or even kerosine.  Wet biopellet is another problem that make biopellet not efisien.

            Beside that, actually there some problem if we want to use biopellet as alternatif source.  That is stove, biomass stove is not compatible with biopellet.  It?s also have an expensive price, so we need to find or create another stove for biopellet.  Raw material supply, as you know biopellet use biomass waste such as rice hulks, but now people realize that biomass waste can be something useful such as planting media, for biogas and biopellet.  Because that, in the future biomass waste will be very valuable and there will be availability problem to find it.  Biopellet making process is pretty complicated and it need factory to produce biopellet.  If we compare it with bio-briket, people can use a simply tool to make it, so it doesn?t really need a factory.  Beside that, there?s a little difference between bio-briket and biopellet.

            So, it?s need more time and effort to make biopellet as the main energy source for household activity.