THURSDAY, March 28, 2024
nationthailand

BCPG backs smart park with Bt7 bn 

BCPG backs smart park with Bt7 bn 

ALTERNATIVE-energy operator BCPG Plc plans to invest Bt7 billion to establish the Smart Park industrial estate project in Rayong province by 2021.

Among other plans announced by the company, it will transfer its business into a digital energy solution provider to take advantage of the high growth potential in digital means of providing renewable energy more efficiently and cleanly.
The company also plans to increase its capacity for electricity generation by 100 megawatts (MW) by the end of this year.
Bundit Sapianchai, president and CEO of BCPG, a green power business focused on renewable energy, said the move to transfer its business into what it calls the digital energy field was aimed at ensuring sustainable growth in such operations over the long term. With the company as a provider of digital energy solutions, it will enable services in peer-to-peer energy trading using blockchain technology. This would create a digital energy ecosystem in the country, Bundit said.
The blockchain technology platform allows households to produce their own energy supply through roof-top solar panels. 
This environmentally friendly source of energy can be put to their household needs. The householders can also distribute the solar energy to other households via blockchain as a peer-to-peer energy transaction at low cost.
This means households can gain savings of around 25 per cent per unit compared with the traditional supply of electricity from the electricity authorities in their countries.
With householders having the means to share the electricity they generate with others, governments would have less need to build more power plants.
The company’s new business unit, Centre of Digital Energy (Code), will handle the digital-based distribution of energy under this business model.
The application of this blockchain technology comes from Power Ledger, an Australia-based company that provides a peer-to-peer marketplace for trading in renewable energy.
The company has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Metropolitan Electricity Authority (MEA) to use the blockchain-based platform for peer-to-peer energy trading.
“I think that Code will be form part of our efforts to drive the business forward in the digital world with the use of this cutting-edge technology. This enables us to provide energy management services in the digital energy era.” In a related initiative, the company has joined with property developer Sansiri to develop green energy at Sansiri's 77 project. This will serve as a prototype project that uses blockchain for peer-to-peer energy trading. The company says it will be the first such project in Southeast Asia and operations are expected to start in June.
The Sansiri 77 project, as the first peer-to-peer energy trading project in the region, will make use of a 300 kilowatt hour (kWh) battery storage system and 150kW from solar panels. It will allow the 80 residents in the property development to balance their energy usage between their local grid and the main electricity grid. There is also the option to enable any excess electricity to be sold back to retailers via the network. Roof-top solar panels have been installed at Habito Mall, Bangkok Prep International School and Park Court Condominium of MK Property.
In the first stage, the project will generate green-sourced energy of 5-10 megawatts, rising to 30 megawatts later.
Regarding the company’s planned Bt7 billion investment in the Smart Park industrial estate in Rayong, this will result in the building of alternative energy infrastructure. Floating solar and roof-top panel installations at the estate would be able to generate electricity of around 280 gigawatt hours (gWh) a year.
The floating solar and roof-top solar panels will cover around 2,000 rai. 
The three-year project will be started by the end this year and will be finished in 2021.
Bundit said that by the end of this year it expects to generate revenue growth of around 15-20 per cent from the Bt3.7 billion posted last year. He said that the firm now a capacity in green-sourced energy of 600 MW and aims to increase this capacity by 100 MW by the end of the year.
 

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