SET-listed SPCG Plc, a pioneer in solar farm development in Thailand, expects to earn more revenue from sales of rooftop solar panels for residential and commercial buildings as well as industries, as solar power becomes more popular.
A surge in electricity bills is a key factor driving demand for rooftop solar panels among households and businesses, said Pipat Viriyatranon, financial director of SPCG.
The company’s wholly owned subsidiary Solar Roof Thai, which was set up in January, sells products for residential buildings, while another subsidiary oversees sales to commercial buildings and factories.
SPCG has set a target to sell rooftop solar panels with power generation capacity of 750 megawatts, up from 5MW, in the residential building segment. The company did not set a time frame, but expects to achieve the goal in two to three years.
The company said sales to commercial buildings had reached 50MW and sales to factories were 200MW.
The rooftop solar panel business is expected to help the company offset a drop in revenue from electricity sales at its solar farms, attributed to the expiration of adder tariffs granted to its 36 sites.
The tariffs will expire at 14 SPCG solar farms this year and at 13 more next year. The company has already lost some revenue from the expiration of adder tariffs at nine sites.
To deal with the revenue loss, SPCG plans to develop 23 new solar farms across the Eastern Economic Corridor (EEC) under the government’s 500MW EEC Solar Farm scheme. The power generation capacity of the project is set at 316MW for the first phase.
The company has also invested in two solar farms in Japan: the 30MW Tottori Yonago Mega and the 6.7MW Fukuoka Miyako Mega installations.
The capacity calculation is based on the company’s shareholding.
Another solar farm project, Ukujima Mega, with a capacity of 86MW, is under construction and scheduled to start operating in July next year.