Thailand's energy market is centered around the state-owned Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (EGAT), which is responsible for generating, transmitting and wholesaling electricity, and whose own generating capacity accounted for 34% of Thailand’s total electricity generating capacity as of the end of 2022. As the Transmission System Operator (TSO), EGAT oversees the balance of the supply and demand in the transmission system and controls and administers all the electricity generated in provincial areas from those power plants connected with its high-voltage transmission lines and high-voltage substations. EGAT is the only organization that can purchase or resell wholesale electricity to other distributors.

Besides EGAT, there are two retail distributors who are responsible for distributing and providing low-voltage electricity to end users, the Metropolitan Electricity Authority (MEA) and the Provincial Electricity Authority (PEA), with the MEA servicing Bangkok, Nonthaburi and Samut Prakan provinces (28% of the market in 2019), while the PEA services the remainder of the country (71% in 2019).

Private Power Producers

Since 1992, Thailand has encouraged private companies to enter the power generation market. These companies are regulated by the amount of electricity each facility can produce, according to the following table.

In the case of the first two categories, the electricity is sold directly to EGAT under the terms of the long term contracts they have arranged. In the case of VSPP's, the electricity can be sold to the PEA and MEA utilizing the applicable feed-in tariff for the type of power facility involved. In some cases, private electricity companies may have a transmission system directly to the industrial estates which they service.

Power Development Plan

The course of Thailand’s electricity industry development has set forth a goal of greater efficiency - both on the supply side and demand side. The aim is to ensure the optimization of energy resources and minimization of environmental impacts, with an ultimate goal of sustainable energy development. On the other hand, the industry has also had to properly adjust to economic and social changes as well as national energy policies and strategies over the past decades.

The rise of Thailand’s industrial sector is the primary contributor to the country’s large electricity appetite. The chart below highlights the percentage share of the country's total electrical energy consumption in 2022 for each of the main sectors. The largest share, 44.9%, was consumed by industrial users, followed by residential users at 27.2%. The business sector accounted for 23.4% of total electrical consumption, according to data from Energy Policy and Planning Office, Ministry of Energy.

Thailand is highly dependent on energy imports. Therefore, the country has identified that it needs to develop new sources of energy both domestically and regionally, through collaboration with neighboring countries as well as promoting the use of energy from renewable sources and improving infrastructure to reduce the cost of transport and improve efficiency.

“Thailand Power Development Plan 2018 (2018-2037) was approved by the cabinet on April 30, 2019, and further updated in 2020 as "PDP 2018 rev.1". It focuses on:

(1) Energy Security: coping with the increasing power demand to correspond to National Economic and Social Development Plan and taking into account fuel diversification

(2) Economy: maintaining an appropriate cost of power generation for long-term economic competitiveness

(3) Ecology: lessening the carbon dioxide footprint of power generation and focusing on renewable energy sources

Estimated energy targets for the PDP2018 rev.1 are shown in the following table: