Thailand is jump starting a decades-old plan to create a Southeast Asia electricity super-grid, and wants to be the power-trading hub at the center of it.
The nation is set to triple the amount of electricity from Laos that it resells to Malaysia, while encouraging infrastructure upgrades stretching from Cambodia to Myanmar necessary for cross-border power trading, said Wattanapong Kurovat, director general of the country’s energy policy and planning office. The moves are part of Energy Minister Sontirat Sontijirawong’s efforts to make Thailand’s power system cleaner, cheaper and more efficient.
The trade is simple, Wattanapong said. Thailand would buy more electricity for its own national grid from Laos, which generates more than it needs from dams along the Mekong River and its tributaries. It would then have excess power in its own national grid that it could sell into Malaysia, Cambodia or Myanmar.
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