Moving the Thai Market: Promise and Perils
Moving the Thai Market: Promise and Perils
Thailand faces an annual growth in peak electricity demand of 15%. In new office complexes, inefficient lighting adds heat to already large cooling loads. A $180-million DSM plan is only the beginning of a huge task ahead.
In recent years both general economic growth and commercial building construction in Thailand have boomed. Most of the new buildings are designed for a high level of amenity, including air-conditioning and lighting systems that provide illumination levels comparable to those found in buildings in the West. This contributes significantly to the 15% annual growth in peak electricity demand for the country. Designing and retrofitting buildings to use less energy is a way to avoid both high energy bills for building owners and the strains of rapid growth on the nation's electricity infrastructure.
The scenario painted here is not unlike many other developing countries where industrialization has taken up speed; a tropical country with rapid growth, relentless cooling demand, and economic policies-geared towards promoting indigenous industries-that can impede the adoption of new technologies.
THE PROMISE
Lighting accounts for about one third of electricity use in Thailand's commercial sector. Therefore, efficient lighting technologies employed in commercial buildings offer a large potential for electricity conservation. Whole-building energy analysis, where the combined effects of cooling and lighting are explicitly taken into account, has shown that a combination of efficient fluorescent lighting system components and compact fluorescent lamps used in place of typical lighting in Thai offices, hotels, and retail buildings would save roughly two-thirds of the lighting electricity and from one-quarter to half the total building electricity use. This is because in a hot, humid climate such as Thailand's, much of the savings are derived from reduced energy consumption of the air-conditioning system when lighting-related cooling loads are lowered; these can account for as much as 36% of the total energy savings.
The economics of investing in more efficient lighting are extremely favorable, as well. From a societal perspective, the cost of conserved energy for the full complement of lighting conservation measures considered here is one quarter or less than the average retail price of electricity charged to commercial customers, with a payback time of less than one year in hotels and retail buildings and approximately three years in offices.
REALITY OF THE MARKET
Despite the strong economic incentives to install energy-efficient lighting systems in Thailand, such systems remain the exception rather than the rule. Part of the problem has been a lack of information about the options, their savings, and the life-cycle costs associated with their use. The architectural and engineering community is just beginning to become aware of the opportunities for conservation in commercial buildings. Even so, in Thailand's very competitive market for commercial space, building owners and developers are often reluctant to consider any measures designers might propose that will increase initial costs. Moreover, the market for energy-efficient lighting products suffers from a "chicken-and-egg" problem: because the market is small, products are expensive and in short supply, which, in turn, ensures that the market remains small.
Clearly if Thailand is to improve the efficiency of its commercial lighting in the short term, it will need to import efficient lamps, ballasts, and luminaires at least until these products can be manufactured domestically. Yet there remain significant barriers to the importation of efficient hardware. A case in point is the electronic ballast. High import duties and taxes, which together increase the pre-tax price by 50%, make imported electronic ballasts significantly more expensive, thereby ensuring that virtually all ballasts sold in Thailand are domestically-manufactured standard magnetic ballasts that exhibit high losses.
Testing procedures required for imported ballasts magnify this problem. Currently regulations specify that all ballasts must meet or exceed performance relative to a reference ballast. If they have not established a reference ballast for a particular model, then that model cannot be imported. This situation has inhibited the adoption of efficient ballasts.
Although the Thai government recognizes the need to encourage energy and environmental conservation and has promoted several measures to achieve these ends, it has not addressed the issue of high import duties on lighting equipment, which make many efficient imported lighting products too expensive for the local market. It would behoove the Thai government to take steps to reduce this formidable barrier to rational energy use by reducing import duties and taxes and by establishing incentives to stimulate companies to manufacture efficient lighting products locally. Additionally, test procedures for imported products need to be streamlined so that they maintain a commitment to product safety, while not inhibiting the adoption of new technologies.
CURRENT GOVERNMENT INITIATIVES
The Thai government has put forth two policy initiatives that should help to spur the adoption of more efficient lighting products. These include a proposed energy standard for commercial buildings, with specific provisions for lighting, and fresh plans by the nation's electric utility to implement conservation programs.
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Commercial Building Energy Standard
The government has established a voluntary energy standard for commercial buildings, which contains provisions for reducing installed lighting power. The code suggests illumination levels for various tasks and efficacy ranges for different types of lamps. It also establishes a lighting budget with maximum lighting power densities for various building types in W/m^2. The lighting budgets in the standard for offices, retail buildings, and hotels are two-thirds to one-quarter less than the installed lighting power densities of typical buildings. (By contrast, installing the full complement of efficient lighting technologies would improve upon the proposed standard by roughly one-third, depending on the building type and its function.) However, it is unclear at this point what impact this voluntary standard will have on lighting design practice in Thailand.
- Utility DSM Programs
The quasi-public electric utility serving Thailand has developed a plan for committing its resources in pursuit of increasing customer energy efficiency. The DSM programs, which commenced in Fall 1993, project energy savings of 1 080 GWh annually and peak savings of 225 MW, at a cost of US $180 million spanning a five-year period. The DSM plan includes a variety of programs targeting all sectors. The overall estimated cost of conserved energy is one-half the avoided cost of new supply.
Two types of incentive programs have been targeted for the commercial sector: design assistance for new buildings and lighting retrofits in existing buildings. The development of utility lighting DSM programs over the next several years in Thailand can be expected to significantly reduce electricity use for lighting in Thailand's rapidly growing commercial sector. It should also stimulate the market for efficient lighting products and services. While these efforts are heartening, special diligence is required to capture even a small fraction of the available savings from energy-efficient lighting.
John Busch
John Busch is a Staff Scientist at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. He has been involved in Thailand's developmental and energy issues for over 14 years.
For further information:
Tel: +1 510 486 7279
Fax: +1 510 486 6996
e-mail:jfbusch@lbl.gov
See also:
Electronic Ballast on the Thai Horizon (IAEEL 1/92)
HVAC Savings? (IAEEL4/94; with examples from Thailand on lighting-related cooling loads.)