Thailand

Electricity bill payers in nations as diverse as Germany, Greece, India and China should be aware new solar projects can now generate electricity cheaper for them than legacy coal and gas-fired plants.

The Paris Agreement has been signed by all ASEAN nations and almost all members have declared a carbon emissions reduction target. The diversity in ASEAN’s readiness for energy transition is reflected in the wide-ranging nationally determined contribution targets set for reducing greenhouse gases. An immediate quick win for the renewable energy transition is the harnessing of solar power from an abundance of resources in the region.

A Florida-based e-mobility company and a business park operator have pledged to invest up to $1 billion into the planned factory, in Chonburi province, starting with a 1 GWh section likely to take shape in 2023.

Covid-19 disruption has been cited as the chief culprit as imports from China, Thailand and Vietnam slumped from April to January, but safeguarding duty also appears to have had an impact, with unaffected imports from nations such as Myanmar, Chad and Russia on the rise and Malaysian trade keeping steady.

The 2 MW plant is installed at the historic site of agro-food group SPM, in Thailand. With 2.8 GWh/year of low-carbon electricity, it will cover up to 20% of the site’s annual energy consumption.

Bangkok-based solar developer Constant Energy has secured a THB1.5 billion loan from TMB Bank to finance its commercial and industrial operations.

Analyst WoodMac says South Korea, Thailand and Vietnam will also join India and Australia next year, among the nations where clean energy projects are cheaper than new coal power plants.

Researchers have modeled how the combination of a virtual oscillator control mechanism and a cascaded sliding mode control can help regulate voltage and frequency in a distributed-solar microgrid.

The ‘safeguard’ duty will be levied on Chinese, Vietnamese and Thai solar cells – whether assembled into modules or not – at 14.9% from today and falling to 14.5% in six months’ time. Malaysian products are exempted as their imports have fallen dramatically since the duty was introduced, in July 2018.

Scientists at Thailand’s Mahidol University have developed a new spray coating process which they say could be used in the production of stable multi-layered perovskite solar cells in a variety of colors and transparencies.