The government tries many ways to achieve a lower energy cost in Thailand, and there are many ways to [do] that. You can build a conventional coal-fired power plant, build a new green energy power plant or manage the energy [to] become more efficient. So the government likes the idea. Individuals are very competitive to [the] national grid already. When they sell back to the national grid, people buy less from the national generator, they produce their own. This is in the commercial way of thinking. The technology is already in place. Let's talk and make a perfect collaboration.
The industry is shifting from centralised to distributed, and from [a] conventional way to a smarter way. Also shifting from consumer to prosumer, we foresee that consumers will be producing their own energy. So now the opportunity is there, and we will have a direct touch with the end user – ordinary people like us who consume energy – and we offer them low-cost and low-carbon energy, where they can own their energy and they can use it, or even they can sell it through [an] innovative approach where people can trade their energy peer-to-peer using blockchain technology. The issue of this technology is not because of technology itself, it's about the cryptocurrency, which is one of the mechanisms [that] can [be] use[d] as a trading instrument on the platform, which is backed by the blockchain technology. It's about… understand[ing] it more.
The new way of offering to the country or to [the] community is [to] not only consume the green energy, but let them be a producer. The new generation will be part of the work. In Thailand we sell our power to [the] government, in other countries we sell to the utilities company. We are shifting from wholesale to retail, but building the retail market takes time, and it probably takes another one [to] two years to develop, and it will be a good mix between wholesale and retail within three years. But in [the] longer term, five year[s] up, you will see more… on retail, low cost, low carbon, and a new experience and a new energy economy to individuals. We provide them the system, but the energy or the power belongs to [the] consumer. We give power back to the people, and that's what we believe in terms of [the] democratisation of energy.
