A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Engineering. School of Environment Resources and Development

Thesis (M.Eng.) - Asian Institute of Technology, 1999

This thesis deals with the discussion in the structural and regulatory changes that are affecting electricity sector in Thailand. The direction of change is toward promoting competition in the supply of generation services, restructuring of electricity supply enterprises to clearly separate the provision of competitive generation services from monopoly transmission and distribution services, and the application of new regulation governing access to the transmission and distribution networks and the associated costs of the services provided by the network. The potential impacts of this change on Thai electricity cost and price, Thai economic development, the distribution of income, future choice of generating technologies in Thailand, and research and development from experienced countries ,are discussed. The emphasis of this thesis is to develop the approaches for the best appropriate framework for restructuring and privatization, and the optimal Thai Power Sector in long term. First model is to select the optimal long-term Thai Electricity Supply Industry (ESI) structure by using Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method, which is appropriate for transformation of qualitative relationships into quantitative relationships, to gather information from the experts and major relevant persons in ESI restructuring process in Thailand. The second model is to articulate Thai privatization approach which best balances the requirements of the various stakeholders by gathering information and opinion from four main stakeholders in the privatization exercise of Power sector which are General Public, Power Utilities employee, Government, and Power Utilities management.