Eknat Pushes 10,000-Megawatt People's Solar Scheme, Opens Direct PPA to Cut Power Bills
Energy Minister Eknat Prompan, speaking on the program "Talk with the Anutin Cabinet," outlined the direction of the country's energy structural reform through a new Power Development Plan, or PDP, built on three core principles: clean, secure, and fair. One key policy is the push for a people's solar project with total generating capacity of 10,000 megawatts, with this capacity reserved for the public and an installation size of about 5 kilowatts per household so that generating capacity does not concentrate among large operators, giving people the chance to produce their own electricity and sell surplus power back into the system to offset their bills. On funding, a solar system costs about 140,000 baht per system, and the Energy Ministry proposes helping with a down payment of 50,000 baht, leaving a burden of about 90,000 baht, while opening the way to seek loans from financial institutions. For the industrial sector, the government is pressing ahead with opening a direct clean power trading market, or Direct PPA, on a broader scale, with the National Energy Policy Council having approved guidelines to unlock Direct PPA to cover both data centers and industrial sectors that need clean electricity. As for measures to ease household power costs, the government is restructuring the electricity tariff by separating the public electricity cost from ordinary users' bills, along with a progressive tariff under which the first 200 units of electricity use are charged no more than 3 baht per unit, starting from the September 2026 billing cycle. Meanwhile, the new PDP will open the way to further study alternative energy and technologies, including hydrogen, geothermal energy, fuel cells, and small modular nuclear reactors, or SMRs, to prepare regulatory criteria, safety standards, and infrastructure for future technologies.
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US Hyperscalers to Spend Up to $725 Billion on AI Infrastructure in 2026
The top five US hyperscalers are projecting a combined capital expenditure of $660 billion to $725 billion for 2026, nearly double their 2025 outlays, as the AI build-out shifts from software to physical infrastructure. Microsoft is guiding for roughly $175 billion in adjusted capital expenditure for both FY2026 and FY2027, with two-thirds of quarterly spend going to short-lived assets like CPUs and GPUs and the rest to long-lived data center infrastructure, and it added 1 gigawatt of capacity in Q3 FY2026, doubling its global footprint in two years. Amazon AWS has raised its 2026 capex guidance to approximately $220 billion, with CEO Andy Jassy saying AI capacity is expected to remain constrained through 2027 and contracted demand extending into 2028. Meta saw profit drop 14% in Q2 2026 despite a 28% revenue increase as its build-out, including a 1 gigawatt data center in Ohio and a Louisiana facility that could scale to 5 gigawatts, compressed margins, while Alphabet raised its 2026 capex guidance to as much as $205 billion and its Google Cloud backlog more than doubled year-over-year to $240 billion. The Stargate joint venture involving Oracle, OpenAI and others targets up to $500 billion in infrastructure investment by 2029, and Oracle's FY2026 capex reached $55.7 billion, more than doubling from the previous year.
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Citi: Data Center Opposition Has Not Weakened AI Construction Pipeline
Citi says growing political opposition to artificial intelligence infrastructure ahead of the November U.S. midterm elections has not materially weakened the data center construction pipeline. Data center development has become a bipartisan flashpoint, with local governments introducing moratoriums and at least 15 state legislatures proposing tighter regulatory restrictions, yet spending remains strong as AI infrastructure demand continues to support development. The impact has been concentrated among speculative and early-stage projects, which are increasingly delayed or cancelled during local approval processes, while late-stage developments that have already secured sites and grid connections continue to move ahead. Hyperscalers are seeking workarounds to power constraints and local restrictions, with Amazon pursuing direct investment in nuclear development with Dominion Energy and Meta securing a major nuclear power purchase agreement with Constellation Energy. Citi does not expect another market shock comparable to the emergence of DeepSeek, arguing investors have already adjusted to the prospect of highly efficient Chinese models, though it flags a potentially greater risk from governments restricting models deemed too dangerous, which could abruptly create excess computing capacity.
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