A Survey of Remote Household Energy Use in Rural Thailand

Abstract

In the past, a goal of the Government of Thailand was for all households in the country to have access to electric power. Consequently, the installation of electric power generation system from renewable energy project was created in villages without electric power. The aim of the government project is to promote the use of renewable energy, especially solar PV systems. Solar Home System (SHS) will be the first solution to the no power supply problem. The purpose of this research was survey and distributive questionnaire in a sample solar home system use of rural villages in Thailand that are located in different regions. The main components of the systems (inverter and control unit) more than 50% were broken. The main cause of components broken because of, the SHS users have not enough knowledge for operate and maintenance system. The SHS user needs to increase electricity for use every day Result of studies as shown 78% of the households generate electricity only by SHS, 16.9% usage both of SHS and agriculture diesel engine and 5.1% generate electricity only by agriculture diesel engine. To satisfy the growing demand of energy in a village, a PV hybrid system can be designed by integrating an agriculture diesel engine. This is in order to supply greater power reliability to the community through introduction of a community micro grid.