AI Power Stocks Could Be a Once-in-a-Generation Trade, Starting With Data Center Infrastructure

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.