Adequacy of energy resource
Adequacy of energy resource to ensure reliability of the power system is a primary objective of the PDP 2012. The planning criteria used in developing the PDP 2010 as well as PDP 2012 is a minimum reserve margin of 15%. The PDP 2012 is able to achieve a minimum reserve margin of 15% in all the years during the planning period as shown in Table 19.
Table 19: Reserve margin according to PDP 2012. The total installed capacity is sufficient to maintain a minimum 15% reserve margin over the peak demand after deducting energy efficiency savings.
Both PDP 2010 and PDP 2012 thus achieve the resource adequacy goal using the 15% reserve margin as the benchmark for having sufficient energy resources to meet growing electricity demand.
Because the PDP 2012 is based on a lower demand projection, one might ask what happens when the demand is higher than expected? Electricity is different from other commodities or services. If the supply is not enough to meet demand, the entire system may be affected (in the form of brownouts or blackouts). Electricity cannot be stored, and moreover it takes a minimum of two years (not including the permitting process) to construct a power plant, or more for larger plants and less for VSPP‐scale plants. Will Thailand be caught with power shortage situation?
Because of excessive past investment, Thailand's reserve margin in 2011 is 33.9%, far above the target of 15%. Thailand has sufficient surplus capacity and projects in the pipeline[14] to maintain a minimum 15% reserve margin until 2017, without additional investments in EE/DSM, without adding more cogeneration capacity, and without plant life extension. We thus have at least five years before more capacity is added if the adjusted forecast is accurate. The focus in the PDP 2012 is on smaller, more distributed power plants which have shorter lead times, enabling a shorter, faster response time. This provides an additional, but unquantified, benefit of the PDP 2012.
[14] including the planned capacity addition of VSPPs and SPPs, but excluding the plants deemed “unnecessary” in Table 13 PDP 2012 is on smaller, more distributed power plants which have shorter lead times, enabling a shorter, faster response time. This provides an additional, but unquantified, benefit of the PDP 2012.
