Govt can purchase all 'clean power'
The Energy Ministry believes it can purchase all clean-energy electricity as part of the government's policy of promoting renewable energy.Energy Policy and Planning Office (Eppo) director-general Viraphol Jirapraditkul made that remark yesterday at a seminar entitled "Thailand: The Alternative-Energy Destination".
He said this was true even though the combined capacity of proposed renewable-energy projects exceeded the government's purchase plan.
The ministry has received a great number of proposals for private power plants to sell electricity to the system since the recent increase in the special electricity-price tariff, or "adder".
The existing plan has the ministry purchasing 2,800 megawatts of electricity from biomass power plants, 115MW from wind-power plants and 55MW from solar-power plants from 2008-11.
In this year's first quarter, 1,265 very small power producers proposed selling a combined 6,300MW to the system. Of that, 3,352MW would be contributed by biomass, 2,947MW from solar power and 841 megawatts from wind power.
The Provincial Electricity Authority will buy electricity from plants with a production capacity of 10MW or lower, while the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand will purchase from plants with a capacity of more than 10MW.
Viraphol said the Cabinet had already granted permission for the Energy Ministry to purchase more power than was targeted in the plan, but the ministry must take the effect of the fuel tariff (FT) into account when making purchase decisions.
But he said the ministry believed state electricity agencies could purchase the entire volume of electricity proposed by the private plants. The ministry's original preliminary calculations show the adder payment would increase the FT by 3 satang a unit, or Bt4 billion per year. This calculation does not include the excess electricity from the private plants.
The adder payment will last for seven years from the onset of the companies' electricity distribution, while the ministry may raise or lower the adder rate in the future, in accordance with the situation, he said.
The adjusted adder rate would mean a biomass power plant with a capacity of less than 1MW would gain an adder of 50 satang per unit, up from 30 satang previously.
The adder for plants with capacity of more than 1MW would remain unchanged at 30 satang a unit.
The adder for wind-power plants with a capacity of 50 kilowatts or less would rise from Bt3.50 per unit to Bt4.50 but remain unchanged at Bt3.50 per unit for ones with a capacity of more than 50 kilowatts.
The adder for solar-power plants would remain unchanged at Bt8 per unit, while that for mini hydro plants would also remain unchanged, starting from 80 satang a minute and going up to Bt1.50 per unit.