New electricity price for households consuming up to 200 units per month
Effective from August, about 23 million households will be charged electricity at a rate of 3 baht per unit for the first 200 units they consume, under a major revamp of the energy pricing structure approved by the National Energy Policy Council (NEPC) yesterday.
Electricity prices for households consuming 201-400 units and above 400 units per month will remain unchanged, but without the cost of street lighting added to the monthly bills.
Energy Minister Akanat Promphan said that the energy pricing restructure is aimed at reducing the cost of living on a sustainable basis, while preparing Thailand to migrate to clean and renewable energy.
The new electricity price for residential households will also be extended to tenants of rented houses or rooms, apartments and hostel rooms, as well as houses which are not registered, said the energy minister, adding that the NEPC also agreed to remove street lighting costs from household electricity bills, which had been hidden in the bills for decades without the knowledge of the public.
Yesterday’s NEPC meeting was chaired by Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul. It also decided to open up the market for the unlimited purchase of clean energy by industries, instead of being limited to data centres at a fixed amount of 2,000 megawatts.
Akanat said that industries can buy electricity directly from the power producers instead of from the three electricity authorities, namely the Electricity Generating (EGAT), the Metropolitan Electricity (MEA) and Provincial Electricity (PEA) authorities, whose traditional role as the electricity suppliers will be reduced to being the keeper and operators of the national electricity grid.
As Thailand is opening up to data centres, which consume vast amounts of electricity, the minister said that these centres will have separate electricity supplies and a separate pricing structure to reflect the fuel costs realistically, particularly the cost of LNG in power generation, which means that data centres will be charged more for electricity than households.
The NEPC has also instructed the EGAT, MEA and PEA to terminate their energy purchase contracts with private power producers, particularly contracts which carry a condition that the contracts will be automatically renewed once they expire, unless either notifies the other that it does not want the contracts to be renewed.