The Ministry of Energy, through the Energy Policy and Planning Office (EPPO), together with all relevant agencies, has prepared an action plan to promote Thailand’s battery energy storage industry in 2023–2032. This scheme sets the direction to create a demand and ecosystem to power Thailand’s battery industry and achieve the goal of carbon neutrality. This action plan consists of 4 multi-strand strategies with 15 approaches outlined below:
1. Usage: Support the use of batteries in the Kingdom by using government demand to drive the battery industry (demand driven). This strategy consists of 6 approaches covering 2 sectors—the electricity network system sector and the electric vehicle sector:
Approach 1: Modifying the Power Purchase Agreement.
Approach 2: Promoting the installation of BESS together with VRE (New VRE Integration).
Approach 3: Using BESS to delay investment in expanding transmission and distribution lines (Transmissions Line and Distribution Line (T&D) Investment Deferral).
Approach 4: Purchase of electricity services to enhance security from BESS (Battery Ancillary Services).
Approach 5: Change of government vehicles to electric vehicle (EV) concessions.
Approach 6: Providing various benefits for locally produced BESS users (direct financial support).
2. Production: Supporting the Kingdom’s production competitiveness. The strategy to enhance the value chain and battery production for sustainability in the Kingdom consists of 3 approaches:
Approach 1: Promotion of Government to Government (G2G) and Business to Business (B2B) cooperation.
Approach 2: Facilitating the private sector by establishing one-stop services (ease of doing business).
Approach 3: Promoting BESS manufacturing plants with zero carbon emissions (carbon neutrality supported by Thai government).
3. Laws and standards: Focus on improving the legal process, various regulations, and standards to be able to attract more investors to conduct business in the Kingdom. The strategy to increase competitiveness consists of two approaches:
Approach 1: Standardization for BESS users in terms of quality and safety (standard production, safety, utilization, and waste).
Approach 2: Revision of the legal process, rules, and measures of the Kingdom that are obstacles to business competition (Revision of Regulation).
4. Research, development, and personnel building: promoting research and development of innovation, and enhancing the potential of domestic personnel. This strategy consists of 4 approaches:
Approach 1: Creating an ecosystem conducive to BESS (Readiness Deployment) Research and Development.
Approach 2: Determining research topics for future development (the next generation of ESS) at the Technology Readiness Level.
Approach 3: Promotion of the movement of personnel with BESS knowledge in the Kingdom (Human Resource Transfer).
Approach 4: Cooperation between the private sector and educational institutes to produce personnel to support the development of BESS (capacity building in the battery value-chain).