ขอบคุณ Thaitimes ที่ให้พื้นที่ในการแสดงผลงานทางวิชาการเพื่อปรับปรุงสังคมให้ดีขึ้น ขอบคุณ Manager online #DistributionMarketReform #Thaitimes #ManagerOnline #News1

Strategic Roadmap for Liberalizing Thailand’s Electricity Distribution Market : Part 3 Date: 3 January 2026 2) Guiding Principles for Reform A reform package must be anchored to a few principles that prevent liberalization from becoming either symbolic or harmful: - **Neutrality**: The network operator must not favor its affiliated retailer (or legacy supply arm) over competitors. - **Cost-reflectiveness with protection**: Wheeling and network tariffs should reflect costs, while social policy (lifeline tariffs, targeted subsidies) should be transparent and funded explicitly. - **Reliability first**: New entrants must meet technical and commercial standards; settlement and imbalance rules must protect the system. - **Consumer choice with safeguards**: Switching must be easy, billing must be clear, and dispute resolution must be strong. - **Scalable digital infrastructure**: Data access, smart metering, and settlement systems are the “market plumbing” that make competition real. 3) Pillar A — Third-Party Access as the Foundation (Move from Pilot to Rule) Thailand’s direction toward Third-Party Access and Direct PPA mechanisms indicates a policy pathway to allow qualified parties to move electricity across existing networks under regulated terms. The immediate need is to convert “permissioned exceptions” into a predictable, bankable rulebook that supports investment and competition. **Key design requirements:** - **Standardized connection and use-of-system rules**: Clear timelines, technical requirements, and standardized contracts for interconnection and wheeling. - **Transparent wheeling charges**: A published methodology that is stable enough for long-term contracting and investment decisions. - **Non-discriminatory access and information symmetry**: The network operator must provide the same queue management, outage information, metering access, and processing speed to all parties. - **Imbalance and settlement rules**: A workable mechanism to handle deviations between contracted and actual consumption/generation—especially critical as variable renewables and DER increase. A strong TPA framework also enables corporate decarbonization strategies by allowing a customer to match consumption with contracted clean generation under enforceable delivery and settlement rules. Thailand’s evolving Direct PPA framework discussions make this a timely priority for investment competitiveness. To be continue———————————————————————————————————————————— #DistributionMarketReform #Thaitimes #ManagerOnline #News1

Strategic Roadmap for Liberalizing Thailand’s Electricity Distribution Market: Part 2 Date: 2 January 2026 Detailed Strategy 1) The Strategic Problem: Monopoly-by-Area in a System Becoming Competitive Thailand’s distribution structure is a classic case of “monopoly by territory.” While distribution wires often remain a natural monopoly, the **sale of electricity and energy services** is no longer inherently monopolistic. Technology has changed the cost curve: rooftop solar, behind-the-meter storage, smart inverters, EV charging, and energy management software increasingly enable customers to optimize consumption and even provide grid services. In this environment, geographic retail monopoly can become a barrier to innovation, a brake on clean energy procurement, and a source of persistent inefficiency. The central policy objective, therefore, should not be “breaking up the wires.” It should be **opening access to the wires** while ensuring reliability, fair cost allocation, and universal service. The question is how to accomplish this without destabilizing MEA/PEA finances, undermining cross-subsidies that protect vulnerable users, or introducing regulatory arbitrage. To be continued————————————————————————————————————————————- #DistributionMarketReform #Thaitimes #ManagerOnline #News1

Strategic Roadmap for Liberalizing Thailand’s Electricity Distribution Market: Part 1 Date: 1 January 2026 Thailand’s electricity distribution sector is effectively organized as two geographically exclusive retail-distribution monopolies: the Metropolitan Electricity Authority (MEA) serving Bangkok, Nonthaburi, and Samut Prakan, and the Provincial Electricity Authority (PEA) serving the other provinces. This structure delivered reliability and scale in an era of centralized generation and predictable demand growth, but it now creates economic and strategic constraints in a power system increasingly shaped by distributed energy resources (DER), corporate decarbonization requirements, and digitalization. At the same time, Thailand is beginning to experiment with market-opening mechanisms—most notably the emerging Third-Party Access (TPA) framework and a direct power purchase agreement (Direct PPA) pathway that would allow certain customers to contract for electricity supply while using existing networks. Thailand’s draft/advancing TPA code discussions and the evolving Direct PPA framework signal a policy direction toward selective liberalization, but they remain limited in scope and must be designed carefully to prevent discrimination, cost shifting, and reliability risks. This report proposes an “Open Grid, Open Market” roadmap that preserves national ownership and public-interest obligations of distribution networks, while introducing regulated competition in supply and value-added energy services. The core reform is to separate (functionally and in accounting) the “wires business” from the “energy retail business,” so that MEA/PEA (or their network arms) operate as neutral Distribution System Operators (DSOs) providing nondiscriminatory access to all qualified retailers, aggregators, and prosumers. Four pillars define the strategy: 1. **Neutral network access via enforceable TPA**: Establish nondiscriminatory, transparent access to distribution networks with standardized connection, metering, settlement, and wheeling charges; align this with the evolving TPA code direction. 2. **Unbundling to remove conflicts of interest**: Implement accounting separation immediately and functional separation on a defined timeline to prevent self-preferencing and cross-subsidies that can entrench monopoly power even after “market opening.” 3. **Retail competition (phased contestability)**: Start with large customers and special economic zones, then expand to SMEs and households once metering, billing, and consumer protections are mature. 4. **A digital market layer for DER and P2P**: Scale learnings from sandbox pilots toward a regulated platform for aggregation, peer-to-peer trading, flexibility services, and transparent renewable attribute tracking (where policy chooses to adopt it). Thailand’s P2P trading discussions and sandbox-related materials illustrate both feasibility and the need for rules to move from pilots to an economy-wide framework. If executed with discipline, these reforms can (a) lower total system costs through competitive procurement and demand-side flexibility, (b) accelerate clean-energy investment by enabling corporate procurement and DER participation, and (c) improve service quality by shifting utility incentives toward reliability, efficiency, and modernization rather than volume-based retail margins. The transition must be carefully sequenced so that universal service, affordability, and grid stability improve—not erode. To be continued—————————————————————————————————— #DistributionMarketReform #Thaitimes #ManagerOnline #News1