Blue Solar is a Thai company focusing on renewable energy business. Blue Solar Group has developed solar power plants in many scales such as 66 small residential solar rooftops operated since March 2016, two 5 MW solar farms (VSPP) operated since December 2016.
The company realizes seriousness of climate change and one of our important missions is to participate in energy transition to solve this problem in short and long term. We hopefully wish that the whole renewable energy industry in the world would grow larger and significantly substitute some part of fossil-fuel energy industry in the near future and could finally mitigate climate change problem.
Solar, wind and hydro are among the cleanest energy source. Especially, tropical countries such as Thailand and other South East Asia countries are potentially rich in sun light. Until now, Thailand has more than 3,000 Megawatts of solar power plants installed. This could substitute significant amount of electricity generation from conventional fossil-fuel power plants that emit greenhouse gas into the atmosphere. Unfortunately, energy from solar is not quite reliable as it could be generated only in day time and possibly fluctuates under various weather conditions. As solar power becomes more popular and rapidly installed in this region, this could potentially cause higher unbalanced and instability problem to the power grid system.
Fortunately, in the year 2017, the Thai government has launched SPP Hybrid Firm Power Purchasing Program aiming to initiate an opportunity for renewable energy to prove itself that it could possibly supply reliable power. The total quota for this program was 300MW while the size of each power plant had to fall between 10-50 MW and all power plants that passed the selection process had to begin their commercial operation before the end of 2021. The selection process used competitive bidding process among many candidates that proposed various types of renewable energy. Most of the participants submitted biomass projects for this auction as biomass plant was well recognized for its reliability of power generation. Among all biomass players, sugar mills had the best competitive advantages as they would have sugar cane bagasse (by product from sugar production process) to be raw material for their biomass power plant free of charge. On the other hand, cleaner energy such as solar and wind are not reliable, unless they have to be integrated with Energy Storage System (ESS). Although ESS price was not economically feasible in 2017, we believe that it would be economically feasible within 2021.
We designed a system that would sell electricity at 12 MW AC to the grid in firm period (9am - 10pm) and 7.8 MW in non-firm period (10pm - 9am) by installing 42 MW DC Solar PV and 12 MW, 54 MWh ESS. In order to compete with sugar mill biomass plants, we proposed bidding price at 2.5378 THB or 7.8 US¢/kWh.
85 projects submitted for the auction proposed to supply totally 1,644MW - 5 times more than the quota of 300MW. 42 projects passed technical round and 17 projects, including Blue Solar, passed the final round with the average electricity price of 17 projects at 2.44 THB or 7.5 US¢/kWh.
As we have already passed the selection process, we are optimizing the system design and doing the detailed feasibility study. After this, we have to do CoP (Code of Practice) report, sign a PPA (Power Purchase Agreement) with EGAT (Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand) within December 13th, 2019 and begin the power plant commercial operation before the end of 2021.
In present, Blue Solar is setting up a research company located in Eastern Economic Corridor of innovation (EECi) to optimize technology and system design to develop a high-reliability Solar power plant equipped with Energy Storage System in both theoretical and practical aspects. For theoretical study, we are having research cooperation with National Science and Technology Development Agency (NSTDA) to do a theoretical/ scientific research. For practical study, we plan to develop a pilot plant at the real project site under advice of the energy industry technical advisor.
Accordingly, one project in Arizona - USA that would begin its commercial operation in 2019 is similar to our Solar + ESS project. Tucson Electric Power’s (TEP) solar plus storage facility is being built by NextEra Energy with 100 MW solar array and a 30 MW, 120 MWh energy storage system. The all-in cost for the solar-plus-storage project was significantly less than 4.5¢/kWh over 20 years. By the way, if the value of its available subsidies is backed out, the pricing on the project is closer to 9¢/kWh, but it is still impressive for the plant that would begin its operation in 2019.
We would like to do the practical feasibility study to optimize technology and system design as well as to maximize financial return with the professional advisor (or owner engineer) who has experience in TEP’s solar plus storage project. As TEP’s project would begin its operation in 2019 while our project would begin its operation in 2021, solar panel and battery technology would significantly advance and their cost would significantly decrease in the same time. In the website of Forbes magazine on Sep 6, 2018, it said that cost of Lithium-Ion batteries had fallen to $200 per kWh by 2017 and quoted Elon Musk’s statement that Tesla would be at $100 per kWh within 2020. Our company expect that the technology improvement together with lower investment cost in 2021 and the expert’s experience from TEP’s 2019 project would highly contribute to the success of our SPP Hybrid (Solar + ESS) project in Thailand and finally prove that solar energy in tropical region such as South East Asia could be made reliable and cost-competitive. Moreover, as the site is located only 10 km. from the city center of Suphan Buri province, this project is also designed to have renewable energy learning center, organic agriculture under solar panels and to be promoted for green tourism.
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We believe that solar power generation would be widely installed throughout South East Asia. However, more installation of solar power generation system might result in more unbalance and instability of the power grid. In the night time, early morning and late afternoon, it would need other additional power plants to compliment the missing electricity generation from solar. This would not be reasonable for other additional power plants to be operated inefficiently in that way. Furthermore, some countries have deregulated power market that could leads to efficient power pricing, any way, they could face the problems of power security and stability when more solar and wind power penetrates into the grid. On the other hand, if the electricity supplied to the grid is already made stable from the power plant, this could lead to more efficient power trading (as the power plant itself could select the appropriate supplying time to match the energy market demand) as well as maintain power security and stability. Besides, high reliability renewable energy power plant (firming or time-shifting) is self-sufficient. As it needs less external assistance to fulfill or complement its power supply, it is scalable and could be simply applied to community level, district level or even city level.
Lastly, we are diligently working on our SPP Hybrid Firm project with the meaningful purpose and would like to welcome all positive cooperation as we believe that the implementation of this project would contribute to significant development of renewable energy industry in South East Asia. We would like to restate that we always wish to see the whole renewable energy industry in the world practically grow larger and significantly substitute some part of fossil-fuel energy industry in the near future and could finally mitigate climate change problem. Hopefully, Blue Solar has strong will to participate in this energy transition.
