SET-listed Gulf Energy Development, Thailand's largest private power producer by capitalisation, expects its solar farms, including 12 new farms it is preparing to develop, to support the state's attempts to deal with costly electricity bills.
Deputy chief executive and chief financial officer Yupapin Wangviwat suggested the purchase of electricity from this renewable source is a solution to the volatility in fuel prices, which can drive up the price of electricity, after Gulf signed a 25-year contract to sell electricity generated by the 12 solar farms to the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (Egat).
Electricity generation produced by solar farms is less costly than electricity produced by fossil fuels, according to Ms Yupapin.
Thailand currently depends on gas as a fuel, which accounts for 60% of the fuels used for power generation.
The 12 solar farms, to be operated by Gulf's wholly-owned subsidiary Gulf Renewable Energy, comprise five solar farms with a contracted capacity of 259.6 megawatts, and seven solar farms featuring energy storage systems that have a total contracted capacity of 385.2MW.
The facilities are scheduled to start operations between 2024 and 2025.
The construction of the 12 solar farms came after Gulf won right to develop renewable projects in an auction held between October 2022 and April 2023 by the Energy Regulatory Commission under its 5.2-gigawatt renewable energy scheme.
Gulf earlier signed power purchase agreements with Egat to develop 24 solar farms, with a total contracted capacity of 1,294MW. Eleven of these solar farms have energy storage systems.
They are scheduled to begin operating between 2026 and 2029.
All the solar farms and solar farms with energy storage systems will receive a feed-in tariff of 2.16 baht per kilowatt-hour and 2.83 baht per kilowatt-hour, respectively, throughout the term of the contracts.
The development of solar farms aligns with Gulf's target to increase the proportion of renewable energy it produces to at least 40% of the total by 2035, which is in line with Thailand's policy to promote the use of clean energy.
The company intends to achieve this target through additional investments in renewable energy including solar power, wind power and hydroelectric power both domestically and overseas.
Thailand announced in 2021 at the 26th UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow that it would be more aggressive in addressing climate change, striving to reach carbon neutrality, a balance between carbon dioxide emissions and absorption, by 2050, along with a net-zero target, representing a balance between greenhouse gas emissions and absorption, by 2065.