**1. Introduction**

Owing to the considerable social and environmental concerns, environment and energy issues are two of the main motivations of global sustainable development [1]. In particular, certain countries have struggled to achieve two goals, economic growth and energy savings [2]. Among these countries, Thailand is one of the major countries attempting to contribute energy savings [3]. In 2013, approximately 8.58% of the final electricity consumption was produced by total renewable energy resources (14,107 GWh from 164,322 GWh of the final consumption) [4]. Although this share is not insignificant compared to other countries, the electricity generated from renewable energy resources, which are one of the most appropriate to use renewable energy facilities, could be larger than the current amount of renewable energy facilities [5]. Moreover, the majority of renewable energy facilities currently used in Thailand are hydro and biomass facilities (Table 1; [5]). Therefore, solar and wind energy have significant potential.

Moreover, because Thailand which is one of the nations in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), agreed the Paris Agreement which presents the Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC), the governmen<sup>t</sup> of Thailand should attempt to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases (GHG) by utilizing renewable energy resources [6]. Table 2 summarizes key descriptions which are applied to Thailand.


**Table 1.** Current status of electricity production from renewable energy facilities in Thailand [5].



As the initial part of Thailand national government's contribution, the governmen<sup>t</sup> has aimed to apply renewable energy facilities in public buildings for energy savings [8]. Among these buildings, public education institutes are required to contribute to energy saving through the installation of renewable and sustainable energy facilities [9].

Currently, Thailand has employed a long-term national energy and electricity planning policy which is called as the Power Development Plan (PDP) from 2015 to 2036 [10]. The majority of PDP considers the production and distribution of renewable energy facilities in Thailand. That is, renewable energy and its facilities are among the top priorities in the successful applications of PDP. Because dependence on fossil fuels can be environmentally and economically unsustainable with notable heavy burdens on the national economy, Thailand's governmen<sup>t</sup> hopes to fully revise its national energy systems with renewable energy. Based on the key concept of PDP, the Alternative Energy Development Plan 2015 was introduced and employed for the reduction of dependence on fossil fuels and the promotion of using alternative energy facilities from 7279 MW to 19,635 MW-capacity (2014–2036).

However, only few studies have investigated and explored the potentiality and possibilities of renewable energy facilities in Southeast Asia. Table 3 summaries the findings of previous studies which were conducted in Southeast Asia.

**Table 3.** Examples of the suggested configuration of renewable energy production systems in Southeast Asia.


As presented in Table 3 and the findings of previous studies conducted in Southeast Asia, there are notable economic burdens in successfully diffusing renewable energy production facilities. Thus, several nations have attempted to preferentially employ the facilities with the considerations of their public institutions and organizations [17,18].

Therefore, the current study introduces the optimal configuration of renewable energy generation systems for Chiang Mai University, which is one of the largest public universities in Thailand. Using HOMER software (Hybrid Renewable and Distributed Generation System), the possible components of the configuration are introduced by reducing the environmental pollution and the dependence on the national grid system. Although there are notable limitations of HOMER software in exploring the feasibility of renewable resources including the needs of time-series datasets, notable time consumption, and certain criteria on converge, HOMER software can consider multiple combinations of different energy-related technologies, provide relatively precise results, and present optimized configurations of energy production systems [19]. That is, the current study aims to respond to the following research questions.

