China leads the world in establishing the first international standard for computing-power and electricity coordination

Bualuang Securities said the Power Development Plan 2026, or PDP2026, is likely to be approved by October 2026 through the energy minister, the Energy Policy Administration Committee and the National Energy Policy Council, without needing cabinet approval, about two months faster than the market had expected. New capacity for 2026-2037 remains unchanged at 50.9GW, and the first power plant auction is expected in mid-2027. What has changed is not the size of investment but the sequence of investment, because the current grid serves today's demand, not the volume of renewable energy. Battery energy storage systems, direct power purchase agreements and data centers under PDP2026 mean investment in transmission systems, smart grid substations and engineering, procurement and construction work must come before new power plants. Case 4, expected to be the main approach, requires investment of about 500 billion baht for grid stability during 2029-2050. Demand for direct power purchase agreements already exceeds 2,000MW and is not limited to data centers, while electricity demand from data centers has been confirmed at about 7-8GW. The deciding factors are the wheeling charge for grid use and the readiness of the transmission system. For battery storage, the ministry is giving more weight to large, grid-scale systems, with battery capacity in the plan for 2026-2037 at 14.5GW and possibly rising to 55GW by 2050. The broker keeps an above-market view on the utilities sector, with GULF and GUNKUL still the top picks, but the order of attractiveness has clearly shifted, with GUNKUL moving to the front on its transmission EPC business and electrical equipment that benefit before the power plant auction. GULF still has the greatest opportunity to add profit in value terms and has businesses covering renewable energy, battery storage and gas. GPSC is supported by power plant renewals and battery storage, BGRIM still needs clarity on the wheeling charge, and EGCO and RATCH stand out for dividends and the opportunity from power plant renewals.

Mr. Teerawat Amornthatri, Managing Director of Bangkok Sheet Metal Public Company Limited, or BM, disclosed that the operating results for the third quarter of 2026 are likely to continue growing from the second quarter of 2026, in which the company had a net profit of 40.63 million baht and total revenue of 543.38 million baht. The main driver was the Data Center group, which has a sufficient order backlog to support production well into next year, causing the proportion of domestic revenue to rise to 58% from 50%. Meanwhile, overseas sales have remained strong, especially in the energy storage system group, where volume increased significantly. The company is focused on producing battery storage cabinets in container-sized units, mainly for export to the United States, and has benefited from the weaker baht, which supports export revenue. The company is confident that total revenue this year will grow in line with its target of 1.8 to 1.9 billion baht and has the opportunity to grow beyond that to 2 billion baht, with new customers continuously entering business negotiations across all six product groups.

Evolution Metals & Technologies Corp. has signed a Strategic Partnership Letter of Intent with UK-based INERGX Energy Optimisation Ltd. to engineer, supply, integrate and service the energy storage and power optimization systems for its planned critical materials and battery black mass recovery facility in the United States. The Facility is planned at approximately 1 GW of on-site capacity within two years, equivalent to the output of one typical U.S. nuclear reactor, and up to approximately 5 GW at full build-out, equivalent to five reactors and to the annual electricity use of approximately 4 million American homes, powered by on-site LNG generation. Under the LOI, INERGX intends to source cells, packs and battery management systems through qualified European or other approved non-China partners, with full country-of-origin documentation and no change in source without EM&T's written approval, addressing the roughly 85% share of global battery cell manufacturing capacity located in China in 2024. INERGX will carry out a First Block Study within eight weeks of receiving EM&T's site inputs, with definitive agreements for the first block targeted within twelve weeks of the study's delivery and acceptance, and a long-term service agreement with an anticipated initial term of ten years. The partnership comes as EM&T executes on its previously announced fiscal 2027 revenue guidance of $400 million to $460 million, reflecting the expected first full-year contribution from expanding its Pohang, Republic of Korea magnet capacity to approximately 10,000 metric tons annually.

Morgan Stanley upgraded BorgWarner to Overweight from Equal-weight, sending shares up 4.4% in premarket trading to $62.92. Analyst Andrew Percoco and his team said a long tail of ICE and hybrid demand supports the core auto outlook, while onsite power and storage add a higher-growth, higher-margin earnings opportunity. The firm raised its price target on BorgWarner to $95 using a sum-of-the-parts approach: $50 per share for the Core Auto business, based on a 5.5x EV/EBITDA multiple applied to a $2.20bn 2027 EBITDA estimate, and $45 per share for Distributed Power, based on a 12.5x EV/EBITDA multiple applied to a $1.2bn 2030 power EBITDA estimate discounted back to present value. Percoco wrote that the turbine generator offers the clearest near-term path to commercializing earnings beyond the auto cycle, ranking second just behind Bloom Energy's Solid Oxide Fuel Cell, while BorgWarner's microgrid inverter and ESS product provide a more modest additional avenue of growth. BorgWarner is expected to update its 2 GW manufacturing capacity target with its fourth-quarter earnings report.

Kasikorn Research Center reports that the world is entering an era in which electricity is at the center of the economic system, the Age of Electricity. The international energy organization IEA indicates that since 2019 global electricity demand has grown more than twice as fast as overall energy use, driven by electric vehicles, air conditioners, the industrial sector, and data centers. In the latest data for 2025, electricity accounted for about 23% of global final energy consumption, while economic activity dependent on electricity generated nearly half of global GDP, or 45%, and it is estimated that electricity's share of global final energy consumption will rise to 35% in 2035. Thailand is entering the Age of Electricity just as the world is, which changes the challenge for the energy system from simply having enough electricity to having electricity that is sufficient, clean, stable, and competitively priced. Clean electricity will become even more important to competitiveness, because Thailand's power generation sector still emits about 87 million tons of CO2 per year. The challenge therefore is not only increasing clean power generation capacity, but also investing in the grid and BESS to create flexibility in time for new demand, while also monitoring related energy policies such as PDP2026, Direct PPA, and the use of loans under the emergency decree for loans of 200 billion baht for the energy transition.