Thailand to Buy Power From China in Next Decade to Meet Demand

Thailand, Southeast Asia’s second- biggest economy, plans to buy electricity from China for the first time starting in 2017 because the country isn’t building its own plants fast enough to meet an expected surge in demand.

The Thai government has signed an initial agreement to buy about 3,000 megawatts of electricity from hydropower plants in southern China starting in 2017, Energy Minister Piyasvasti Amranand, 53, said in an interview. Thailand needs to add more than 30,000 megawatts of generating capacity by 2021 to avoid shortages, according to the ministry’s forecasts.
The accord will bolster Thailand’s own efforts to more than double its power-generating capacity by building coal, nuclear and hydropower plants. The government wants to pare the country’s reliance on natural gas, which provides about 70 percent of Thailand’s electricity.

“We continue to look for other sources of energy and the biggest source around here is probably hydropower,” Piyasvasti said. “Hydropower potential is enormous around here in Laos, Myanmar and southern China.”

China may spend 600 billion yuan ($79 billion) to triple its hydropower capacity over the next 15 years to meet rising demand and cut pollution, Bing Fengshan, secretary general of the China Society for Hydropower Engineering, said on June 8.

Thailand has about 26,000 megawatts of power-generating capacity and needs an additional 31,791 megawatts by 2021, the energy ministry said in a statement on June 4.

China Huaneng Group, the country’s biggest generator, plans to build hydropower plants in provinces including Yunnan, the nearest to Thailand, Liu Xiangdong, a division director at the group’s planning department, said on April 16.

Hydroelectric power produced in China would have to be sent to Thailand via Myanmar, formerly known as Burma. The plan may also be stymied by China’s own power shortage. The world’s fastest-growing major economy had a fourth straight year of power shortfalls in 2006 when consumption peaked in the summer.

Bloomberg