Contracts for Thai private power plants to be extended

BANGKOK, January 3 (TNA) - Contracts for Thailand's private operators of power plants, both independent power producers (IPP) and small power producers (SPP), will be extended for a maximum period of six years each time and the private operators are required to be responsible for environmental issues. Veerapol Jirapraditkul, a member of the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC), told journalists of the policy on Saturday, saying that the public, on the other hand, are allowed to oversee IPP's operations and the private operators' selling prices of electricity must not exceed contracted prices. Veerapol noted that the official requirements for an extension of the IPP contracts, in particular, could help address the problem of power shortages in case of emergency, in which new electricity generating plants are unable to access the official contracting system or are unable to operate under a signed contract. According to the ERC chief, his commission is accelerating on summarising new contracts for both IPP and SPP, with combined capacity of about 6,000 megawatts, whose contracts will be expired over the next 4-5 years. The ERC chief stated that regulations for IPP have been already concluded and sent to the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (EGAT) for the state-run agency to negotiate with private operators, while regulations for SPP will be concluded soon. (TNA)