Geothermal Energy for Southern Thailand: Opportunities and Realities

Electrical energy demand for Southern Thailand is continuously increasing, with new coal/gas-fired power plants planned. However, coal/gas-fired power plants are not only large CO2 emitters, thus intensifying the on-going climate change crisis, but also their technology costs remain stagnant at comparable high levels. Solar and wind energy can be produced at far lower costs; however, their shares on the renewable energy mix are comparably small in Thailand, but with steady increase. A disadvantage of solar and wind energy is that the production is not constant due to day/night and weather, respectively. Such can be compensated by adding geothermal energy, which can act as a backbone of the renewable energy mix, although absolute amounts might be relatively low. In Southern Thailand, hot springs are the surface expressions of active geothermal systems at depth. Surface exit temperatures can reach up to 80°C and reservoir temperatures up to 143 °C, thus being considered as low enthalpy resources, which can be utilized applying binary power plant technology. In the current renewable power plant, geothermal energy is not considered, but Southern Thailand holds promising quantities of geothermal resources. The only current geothermal power plant in Thailand located in Fang can act as a positive example