Energy Ministry moves to filter $35bn 'phantom' data centre power requests

The Ministry of Energy is clamping down on inflated electricity capacity requests from data centres, from which it can be inferred that they have reached an unprecedented 35 gigawatts (GW), a figure nearly matching Thailand's national peak electricity consumption of 40GW.

Energy Ministry spokesman Pongpol Yodmuangcharoen warned that much of the capacity requested includes phantom, or contingent overhead. Investors routinely over-request power allocation to safeguard their projects, he explained.

To prevent wasteful infrastructure spending, the ministry has started vetting applications to identify actual capacity needs. Consequently, Thailand's draft Power Development Plan (PDP 2026) will cap baseline capacity for the data centre sector at a conservative 8.8GW.

Under PDP 2026, energy planners are also shifting security metrics from the traditional reserve margin to Loss of Load Expectation (LOLE), to better assess grid reliability.

To accommodate genuine data centre growth, alongside clean energy expansion, including the government's rooftop solar scheme targeting a million households (5,000 MW), the grid must transition into a "two-way dynamic grid" capable of handling intermittent renewable energy.

The Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (EGAT) plans to invest approximately 35 billion baht ($1 billion) to upgrade grid infrastructure, focusing primarily on high-demand clusters in the Eastern Economic Corridor (EEC).

Urgent priorities include creating a unified, real-time data backbone across EGAT, the Provincial Electricity Authority (PEA), the Metropolitan Electricity Authority (MEA) and the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC).

Authorities will also enforce strict Grid Code requirements, obligating data centre operators to manage their own load fluctuations before drawing on the public grid.