THAILAND
The Thai Government has for many years recognised
the need to diversify its energy supplies and the
energy Master Plan prepared during the 1980’s has
been developed under successive five-year plans. The
New and Renewable Energy Programme under the National
Energy Policy Office’s (NEPO) Energy Conservation
Promotion Programme states that renewable energy is
expected to play a major role in the future.
Owing to the country’s location near the equator,
the consequent good level of insolation is utilised
for both solar thermal and solar PV installations.
Government agencies are involved in the PV sector
and those with substantial PV installations are: the
Department of Energy Development and Promotion (DEDP),
Provincial Electricity Authority (PEA), the Telephone
Organisation of Thailand (TOT), the Public Work Department
(PWD), the Ministry of Education and the Ministry
of Public Health.
The Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (EGAT)
has over the years played a central role in the development
of solar energy systems, although the first PV applications
were installed in 1976 by the Ministry of Public Health
and the Medical Volunteers Foundation at rural health
stations for communications equipment.
By end-1999 about 5 MWp of PV modules had been installed
in the country, of which TOT had 1 MWp installed for
use in microwave repeaters, PWD had 1.5 MWp for water
pumping systems (both for domestic and irrigation)
and the Ministry of Education had some 20 kWp installed
in remote schools.
EGAT has also developed stand-alone projects, grid-connected
systems and hybrid hydro-PV, diesel-PV and wind-PV
systems. In recent years EGAT has collaborated with
NEPO to implement a rooftop PV project. Following
the successful installation of PV panels on 10 households,
100 more were selected and the programme has now been
expanded to include government buildings.
Currently some 50 000 m2 of flat-plate collectors
have been installed on commercial buildings, hospitals
and private residences and solar thermal capacity
is expanding at a rate of some 3 000 – 3 500 m2 of
solar water heaters per year.
EGAT is supporting an R&D programme for concentrated
solar collector and storage systems and NEPO is preparing
a solar hot water programme for hotels, resorts and
hospitals.
Country Notes
(SOLAR ENERGY)
Australia || Canada
|| China
|| France
|| Germany
|| India
|| Indonesia
|| Israel
|| Italy
|| Japan
|| Kenya
|| Korea
(Republic) || Mexico
|| Netherlands
|| Norway
|| South
Africa || Spain
|| Switzerland
|| Thailand
|| United
States Of America
