Lessons learned from studying public initiatives to support energy efficiency finance in Thailand from 1992 to 2014

© 2016, Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht. Despite the huge technical and market potential for cost-effective energy efficiency investments in Southeast Asian markets, only a small fraction of this potential has been realised. Given that the major share of global future energy demand, and associated greenhouse gas emissions, will come from emerging economies, it is important to understand the barriers to mainstreaming energy efficiency into the financial sector. This paper focuses on public initiatives that support one of the main barriers: access to capital. The researchers chose Thailand as a case study because of the range of energy efficiency finance programmes that have been designed and implemented since the early 1990s. Interviews with 21 experts from government, the private sector and academia provided the core data for this research. The analysis employed a multi-level perspective and focused on the historical evolution of public support of energy efficiency finance in the country. We identified three distinct phases of public policy development over the past two decades. Despite an impressive variety of ambitious and creative programmes, the initiatives have not yet succeeded in integrating energy efficiency into the financial sector in a meaningful way. Some of the key lessons found are that (a) it is better to treat energy efficiency and renewable energy in separate financing initiatives, (b) governments find it challenging to design effective mechanisms to de-risk financial investments, and (c) international organisations play an important role in testing and facilitating the introduction of new financing approaches and mechanisms. In emerging economies, cost-effective implementation of energy efficiency measures is a promising alternative that can reduce the need for investment in large-scale power generation capacity. The researchers hope that this paper will contribute to more effective design of programmes to incentivise energy efficiency financing in Thailand and in other economies in Southeast Asia

Motor program for the DSM plan for Thailand

This study is based on the field assessment of motors in a number of factories in Thailand. Results show that their efficiencies in use are lower than those of the corresponding standard motors in the USA. Therefore, there is potential for the standardization and introduction of energy-efficient motors for the DSM plan being implemented.

Neural network based power system damping controller for SVC

The development of a neural network based power system damping controller (PSDC) for a static VAr compensator (SVC), designed to enhance the damping characteristics of a power system network representing a part of the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (EGAT) system is presented. The proposed stabilising controller scheme of the SVC consists of a neuro-identifier and a neuro-controller which have been developed based on a functional link network (FLN) model. A recursive online training algorithm has been utilised to train the two networks. The simulation results have been obtained under various operating conditions and disturbance cases to show that the proposed stabilising controller can provide a better damping to the low frequency oscillations, as compared to the conventional controllers. The effectiveness of the proposed stabilising controller has also been compared with a conventional power system stabiliser provided in the generator excitation syste

Neural network based power system damping controller for SVC

The development of a neural network based power system damping controller (PSDC) for a static Var compensator (SVC), designed to enhance the damping characteristics of a power system network representing a part of the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (EGAT) system is presented. The proposed stabilising controller scheme of the SVC consists of a neuro-identifier and a neuro-controller which have been developed based on a functional link network (FLN) model. A recursive online training algorithm has been utilised to train the two networks. The simulation results have been obtained under various operating conditions and disturbance cases to show that the proposed stabilising controller can provide a better damping to the low frequency oscillations, as compared to the conventional controllers. The effectiveness of the proposed stabilising controller has also been compared with a conventional power system stabiliser provided in the generator excitation system