is jump starting a decades-old plan to create a
electricity supergrid, and wants to be the power-trading hub at the centre of it.
that it resells to
, while encouraging infrastructure upgrades stretching from
to
necessary for cross-border power trading, said Wattanapong Kurovat, director general of the country’s energy policy and planning office. The moves are part of Energy Minister Sontirat Sontijirawong’s efforts to make Thailand’s power system cleaner, cheaper and more efficient.
The trade is simple, Wattanapong said. Thailand would buy more electricity for its own national grid from Laos, which generates more than it needs from dams along the Mekong River and its tributaries. It would then have excess power in its own national grid that it could sell into Malaysia, Cambodia or Myanmar.
“We’re trying to move quickly to become the centre of the region’s power grid,” Wattanapong said in an interview in Bangkok. “We already have the capacity and the infrastructure to support the vision to become the regional hub.”
The idea of connecting power plants and customers across Southeast Asia has been pursued for more than 20 years, but stymied by issues including lack of government coordination and infrastructure funding.
, and require solving technical and legal hurdles in addition to building expensive
. The benefits of success include increased
security and opportunities to develop untapped renewable resources, according to the International Energy Agency.
Thailand already has existing grid interconnection with Laos and Malaysia. Since last year, Malaysia has been buying 100 megawatts from Laos through Thailand, and is looking to increase the volume to 300 megawatts, Wattanapong said.
Border towns in Cambodia and Myanmar have also been buying small amounts of electricity from Thailand, but infrastructure upgrades are needed to reach the scale comparable to connections with Laos and Malaysia, he said.
Being a hub would bring myriad benefits, Wattanapong said. Thailand could earn additional revenue from transmitting electricity across its power lines, address occasional capacity oversupply, and make better use of its existing infrastructure and power plants. By using its grid more efficiently, the cost of electricity in Thailand would be cheaper over the long-term, he said.
Thailand could help spur movement toward a regional system by signing different bilateral deals with its neighbours, which would be easier than trying to negotiate a larger agreement all at once, said Bikal Pokharel, research director for Asia-Pacific power and renewables at Wood Mackenzie.
, according to a 2017 IEA report.
