Thailand

The PV industry in Southeast Asia has come a long way since guest author Ragna Schmidt-Haupt, partner at Everoze, reported on solar financing innovation in the region more than a decade ago. In this article, she outlines five factors for success, the newest of which has the potential to become a game changer, and not only in Southeast Asia.

Scientists have developed a machine-learning model – utilizing K-Means and long short-term memory techniques – that aims to overcome ‘fault detection and classification’ in the operation and maintenance of large-scale solar PV farms.

A group of researchers from the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory assessed the potential for floating PV (FPV) plants at reservoirs and natural waterbodies in 10 Southeast Asian countries. It found that the overall FPV technical potential for the region ranges from 477 GW to 1,046 GW.

Scientists in Thailand built an indoor perovskite solar cell with low-cost carbon electrode architecture. The manufacturing process is based on antisolvent deposition and vacuum thermal annealing (VTA) and reportedly results in higher perovskite film quality.

Lhyfe has started producing offshore hydrogen via a pilot project in France, and Toyota and its partners have agreed to invest in hydrogen in Thailand. The Australian authorities, meanwhile, have approved a hydrogen project in Victoria.

U.S.-based Rondo Energy will operate the world’s largest battery factory in Thailand, two and a half times the size of Tesla’s Gigafactory.

New PV capacity additions in Southeast Asia are expected to bounce back this year for the first time since 2020, according to the Asian Photovoltaic Industry Association. The market is expected to grow by 13% in 2023, for 3.8 GW of new installations.

A group of German companies plans to set up a 500 MW electrolyzer for a 1 GW green hydrogen project in the North Sea. US scientists, meanwhile, have engineered a light-activated nanomaterial to convert ammonia into hydrogen, and Canadian researchers have unveiled a new way to structure catalysts for fuel cells.

In an unexpected move, the government of Thailand has introduced a feed-in-tariff (FIT) of THB 2,1679 ($0.057)/kWh over 25 years for solar and a 25-year FIT of THB 2,8331/kWh for solar plus storage.

While near neighbors, the electricity generation of the countries of Southeast Asia couldn’t be further apart. Indonesia burns locally mined coal; Malaysia has reserves of oil and gas; and populous Singapore, Vietnam, and the Philippines depend on fossil fuel imports. They could all benefit from increased solar electricity but higher grid capacities and interconnection are key for an opportunity to unlock the power of the sun.