Combined heat and power plants kept out of climate-change debate
After his engaging talk at The Nation's "Asia's emerging response to climate change" conference on Friday, I congratulated Energy Minister
Piyasvasti Amranand on the ministry's reopening of the Small Power
Producer (SPP) programme.
The SPP programme requires utilities to purchase electricity generated
from efficient decentralised combined heat and power (CHP) plants. CHP
can lead to huge reductions in fuel consumption by utilising waste heat from electricity production. I asked, "I understand from a recent
Ministry of Energy presentation that 31 CHP applications totalling over 2,400MW of have been submitted. But that the ministry has capped CHP at 500MW. Is this understanding correct? If so, why has CHP been capped - considering industry's vigorous enthusiasm to build these clean, efficient plants? Finally, how does this relate to the ministry's power development plan, which includes only 200MW per year of CHP?"
Piyasvasti said: "It's true that that Ministry of Energy received over
2,400MW of applications from CHP. But some of these have transmission
constraints. We have accepted nine of these projects without transmission constraints, totalling 740MW. Also, we have to await the
outcome of the IPP bidding process, which will be determined in
December." That's an interesting response. Regarding transmission constraints, while it may be possible that transmission presents a constraint in special cases, it wouldn't be expected to be prohibitive in the majority of cases (22 out of 31). Indeed, international experience is that combined heat and power (like other distributed generation technologies), requires far less transmission investment than centralised generation - because CHP is smaller and geographically distributed in ways that tend to better match loads.
Looking deeper, "transmission constraints" is an excuse often given by
utilities to kill competition. Who controls transmission in Thailand?
Egat. Who also owns most of the generation in the country and is in the process of building thousands of megawatts more? Egat. The claim of "transmission constraints" should be thoroughly investigated by an
independent group that does not have a vested interest in the Thai
electricity-generation business.
His other answer, that "we have to wait for the results from the IPP
bidding process", reveals a lot about his allegiances. The Independent
Power Producer (IPP) bidding process is for 3,200MW of large coal and
natural gas power plants that are at most 40 per cent efficient (the
best coal plants) to 55 per cent efficient (the best combined cycle gas turbine natural-gas plants). By comparison, CHP plants are routinely 80
per cent or more efficient.
Why does small, efficient, decentralised CHP take second place in the
queue behind large, comparatively inefficient, centralised power
plants?
Earlier in his talk, Dr Piyasvasti said, "It is dangerous and
irresponsible to deny energy options to address climate change".
I hope that he takes his own words into account when considering clean
and efficient CHP in Thailand.
Chris Greacen
Director
Palang Thai
Bangkok