Thailand raises electricity reserve margin to 20%

BANGKOK, June 20 (TNA) - Thai Energy Minister Pongsak Raktapongpaisal says that he has ordered agencies concerned to raise the national power reserve margin under his ministry's new 20-year-long Power Development Plan (PDP), starting from this year, from 15 per cent of domestic demand for electricity currently to 20 per cent of domestic demand, for the sake of national power security. Pongsak cited Japan as a model, pointing out that Japan has the power reserve margin of 50 per cent of domestic electricity demand and when local nuclear power plants which produced 25 per cent of national electricity supply suspended generation after a massive earthquake and tsunami in March 2011, Japan's power reserve margin remained at 25 per cent and people still had enough power to use. The energy minister explained although Thailand's existing power reserve margin seems to be over 15 per cent, a crisis like the disruption of gas supply from Myanmar in April 2013 cut the margin to only 5 per cent, which was risky, and the margin should, therefore, be raised to 20 per cent, based on the domestic power generation capacity at about 32,000 megawatts currently. The energy minister acknowledged that Thailand's long-term PDP needs to also support the government's new 2-trillion-baht infrastructure development projects, including high-speed train systems, each demands about 2,000 megawatts of electricity. According to the energy minister, Thailand's power supply needs to be planned in advance because the construction of a new power plant takes 5-6 years to be complete. The energy minister noted that he wants Thailand's new power generation projects to be accelerated because the next plant of an independent power producer, which should start its power supply at least 650 megawatts of electricity in 2019, might not be able to meet national power demand at the time. (TNA)