High electricity demand and old power plants
Power estimates were elaborated considering relatively high capital costs (CAPEX) of US$ 1.6m/MWp for PV and US$ 1.7m/MWp for wind. With the current lower CAPEXs, the deployment of wind and solar shall be higher. Also, power energy demand is rapidly increasing in the strong local paper/pulp sub-sector. At the transport level, several high speed train projects shall be realised which have also not been considered in the calculations. Finally, domestic demand will dramatically increase in a country where 23% of the population still uses biomass for cooking.
In addition to this higher power demand, the Thai’s old power fleet needs to be replaced by renewables. Midd-2014, the peak power demand was as high as 27 GW and almost the same amount (25 GW out of the operational capacity 37 GW) needs to be decommissioned.