New Gulf power plant starts operating in Rayong

Gulf Energy Development Plc has started commercial operation of a new gas-fired power generating unit in Rayong to support the company’s long-term electricity sales to the state grid.
The company recently completed a test run of the facility, which has a power generation capacity of 662.5 megawatts, and has supplied electricity to the government under the country’s independent power producer (IPP) category.
“We signed a power purchase agreement with Egat [Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand] for 25 years,” said Yupapin Wangviwat, deputy chief executive and chief financial officer of Gulf.
The new power generating unit, located in the Rojana Industrial Park in Rayong’s Pluak Daeng district, is part of the Gulf PD power plant project, developed by Gulf’s subsidiary Gulf PD.
According to a letter submitted to the Stock Exchange of Thailand on Tuesday, Gulf PD is also operating three other units, each with the capacity of 662.5MW.
Gulf SRC, another subsidiary of Gulf, is running the Gulf SRC power plant, with combined capacity of 2,650MW, in Chon Buri’s Si Racha district.
Its parent firm was granted licences by the Energy Regulatory Commission in 2013 to develop gas-fired power plants, with a total capacity of 5,300MW.
Thailand is tending to use more renewable energy, but the country still  depends on gas as an important fuel to ensure sufficient power supply for businesses and households.
Under the new power development plan, scheduled to be implemented from 2024 to 2037, renewable energy should comprise 51% of total fuel use by 2037, up from 20% at the end of last year, while coal and gas should decrease to 48%, down from nearly 80% early this year, according to the Energy Ministry.
The other 1% comes from nuclear energy and new energy solutions aimed at reducing fossil fuel usage and saving electricity.
There will be a total of 16 large power plants under the plan, which already passed a public hearing, officials said. Some of them are existing facilities with new generators, while others will be new developments. 
Eight of them are gas-fired power plants — five owned by Egat and three to be built by power companies.
The other eight are Egat’s three hydro storage power plants and two planned nuclear power plants, along with the importation of electricity from three power plants outside Thailand.
The government plans to use small modular nuclear reactors – nuclear power technology with a capacity of up to 300MW per unit, or about one-third of the generating capacity of larger, traditional nuclear power reactors.