ERC awaits approval of plan to purchase 400MW from community power plant
Khomgrich Tantavanich, secretary-general of the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC), said that the Power Development Plan (PDP) has reviewed plans to purchase 400-megawatts of electricity from a community-based waste-power plant and is awaiting approval by the Interior Ministry’s Energy Policy and Planning Office (EPPO).
“The community waste-power plant purchase was included in the quota of the current PDP scheme. If the Energy Ministry sends the plan to the ERC, we may purchase 200MW this year and another 200MW next year,” Khomgrich said.
He added that the ERC is also open to purchasing power from public solar projects this year. So far, 78 have shown interest and have signed agreements with the state for the sale of 468.32 kilowatts of energy this year.
He added that the trend of power charges for 2021 depends on several important factors such as power consumption, GDP and other factors such as the direction of the currency. ERC reckons that a negative 1 per cent GDP growth rate will affect the use of electricity by about 0.7 to 0.8 per cent.
As for the rate of electricity in the last quarter of this year, ERC has decided to adjust the variable tariff by Bt0.83 per unit, resulting in the average cost of electricity to be reduced to Bt3.63 from Bt3.64 per unit excluding VAT.
