Thailand’s consumption of electricity surged to a new record high of 34,826.50 megawatts at 9.41pm on Saturday May 6th, breaking the previous record of 33,177.30 megawatts, set at 2.30pm on April 28th last year.
The Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) attributed the surge to the hot weather during the long holidays, from May 4th to 7th, forcing residential consumers to use their air conditioners, electric fans and refrigerators for longer.
The ERC has urged the public to conserve energy while checking their electricity bills issued in May, to find out how much electricity they used in April and whether it was unusually high, adding that there are two possible causes of higher bills, errors in the calculation or a rise in consumption due to the hot weather.
According to the ERC, a progressive power rate is applied, which means that the more power a household uses, the higher the rate it will be charged. The electricity rate for May through August has been set at 4.70 baht per unit.
The cabinet recently agreed, however, to help ease the burden on households which use up to 300 units/month, by 02.04 satang/unit for households which consume up to 150 units/month and by 67.04 satang/unit for households which consume between 151 and 300 units/month.
18.36 million households will benefit from the rate cut, which will cost the state 7.6 billion baht in subsidies.
