Electric blues

Now we hear of US’s General Electric plans to build power generating wind turbines in Thailand. Overall, it sounds good. However, there’s not a lot of sustained wind blowing in Thailand (no pun intended).

Solar is a better investment, particularly passive and concentrated solar. Thais should also be looking at tide and river power-generating possibilities.

Try this experiment: Plan to set up a solar arrangement for your home, including water pumps. Then find a Thai person who is expert enough to help you design and build it.

You probably won’t be able to. The reason? There are essentially no Thais who know about solar on a practical level.

If you do find someone to build it, they will likely charge an arm and a leg — whereas a farang expert could build the same system for one fifth of the cost in his home country.

That’s a common dynamic when you try to build something that’s uncommon in a particular region.

Here’s an example from another perspective. In Thailand you can get a grass and bamboo sala (spa) built for about 4,000 baht. If you tried building the same in the US, it might cost you US$5,000 (180,000 baht), if you could even find someone with the skills. Then you’d have to find the materials. Bamboo posts and grass roofing materials are rare in the US.

Getting back to alternative energy: It’s not too late for Thailand to get on board with alternative, clean power production. If Thailand had its own experts and locally-made components, it would be 10 steps ahead of the game. Without that, it will be compelled to hire outside experts and import foreignmade components at high prices.

With in-house experts, innovative Thais may even contribute to the invention process. Instead of putting so much focus on turning out tens of thousands of business majors from universities each year (what practical good do biz executives do anyway?) Thai institutions could be training experts in alternative energy. Currently, there are fewer in all of Thailand than you can count on your fingers, but that could change for the better.

KEN ALBERTSEN