JAKARTA - State-owned electricity company PLN has proposed a plan to build a power transmission cable across the Sunda straits separating the southern tip of Sumatra and western part of Java. The 800-kilometer transmission cable would send 3,000 megawatt of power from a power generating center in South Sumatra to Java, an official of PLN said.

* The project, to cost around US$1.8 billion, had been proposed to the government and if approved it could be completed in 2012, PLN chief commissioner Al Hilal Hamdi told the newspaper Investor Daily.

* Hamdi said currently PLN was carrying out a feasibility study on the project.

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