PEA & MEA Holidays in Thailand 2026 — closed counters and cheap power are not the same days
People search "PEA/MEA holidays 2026" for two very different reasons. Some want to know when the counters are shut so they do not waste a trip. Others want to know which days electricity is billed at the off-peak rate for the full 24 hours, so they can time the heavy appliances. The two answers do not match, and in 2026 they differ by exactly 3 days. This page separates them.
The short answer: in 2026 there are 19 days on which electricity is charged at the off-peak rate for the whole 24 hours, under MEA Announcement 32/2568 — and a further 3 days when government offices are shut but power costs exactly what it costs on any working day. Those 3 are substitution holidays and cabinet-added special holidays, which the ERC's TOU notification explicitly excludes from the off-peak set. Together that is 22 dates in 2026 that are abnormal on one list or the other. Of the 19 off-peak days, 2 already fall on a Saturday or Sunday and so add nothing, leaving 17 working days genuinely converted to all-day off-peak. And the thing most readers do not realise: off-peak only exists on a TOU meter at all. On an ordinary progressive-tariff meter a public holiday does not make your electricity one satang cheaper. TOU rates are at the TOU rate schedule 2026; the full-year grid is at the 2026 off-peak calendar.
"Utility holiday" means two things — check which one you are asking about
If you are going to a counter, you want the office-closure list. If you are about to run the washing machine, the dryer or an EV charger, you want the off-peak list. The two come from different announcements and they do not coincide on every date.
List 1 — days the counters are closed
PEA and MEA are state enterprises, so their non-working days follow the government working calendar — which does include substitution holidays and cabinet-added special days. It governs anything that needs a counter: filing a meter application, transferring a name, paying in person.
List 2 — all-day off-peak days (TOU meters)
This comes from the ERC's 2566 TOU-period notification, quoted in identical wording by MEA and PEA: Saturdays, Sundays, National Labour Day and regular public holidays are off-peak for the full 24 hours — but not วันพืชมงคล (Royal Ploughing Day), substitution holidays or cabinet-added special days. For 2026 that leaves 19 dates.
List 3 — on an ordinary meter there is no list to check
Most Thai homes are on the progressive tariff, not TOU. The rate depends on how many units you use in the month, not on the hour or the day, so a holiday does not lower the bill. If you are unsure which you have, look at the bill — a TOU bill carries separate On Peak and Off Peak lines.
Once you know which you are on and are still weighing a switch, the decision criteria are at is a TOU meter worth it, and the daily hour bands are at on-peak and off-peak hours explained.
The 3 days in 2026 when the utility is closed and power is still on-peak
This is where readers most often get caught. All 3 fall on a Monday or a Friday — full working days that were declared holidays. The counters shut, but a TOU meter still counts 09:00–22:00 as on-peak exactly as on any weekday. Anyone who runs the dryer or charges a car on these days because "it's a holiday, so it must be cheap" pays the full peak rate.
| Date | Day | Why it is a holiday | TOU rate that day |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2 Jan | Friday | Cabinet-added special holiday | on-peak as normal |
| 1 Jun | Monday | Substitution holiday | on-peak as normal |
| 7 Dec | Monday | Substitution holiday | on-peak as normal |
The reason is in the wording of the notification itself: the TOU rate is tied to "regular public holidays", not to every day the government happens to be closed. A substitution day exists because the real holiday landed on a Saturday or Sunday — which is already off-peak — so counting the substitution too would grant the benefit twice. In 2026 that situation arises 3 times.
Month by month in 2026 — how many holidays each month has
A common search is "PEA holidays in <month> 2026", so this table is ordered by month. The middle column lists the days that are off-peak for the full 24 hours (TOU meters only); the right column lists days when the counters shut but the price does not move. Note that 3 months carry no announced holiday at all, and that one stretch runs three days back to back.
| Month | All-day off-peak | Closed, still on-peak |
|---|---|---|
| January | 1 Jan New Year's Day | 2 Jan Cabinet-added special holiday |
| February | — | — |
| March | 3 Mar Makha Bucha | — |
| April | 6 Apr Chakri Memorial Day · 13 Apr Songkran (day 1) · 14 Apr Songkran (day 2) · 15 Apr Songkran (day 3) | — |
| May | 1 May National Labour Day · 4 May Coronation Day · 31 May Visakha Bucha | — |
| June | 3 Jun H.M. Queen Suthida's Birthday | 1 Jun Substitution holiday |
| July | 28 Jul H.M. the King's Birthday · 29 Jul Asalha Bucha · 30 Jul Khao Phansa | — |
| August | 12 Aug H.M. Queen Sirikit's Birthday (Mother's Day) | — |
| September | — | — |
| October | 13 Oct H.M. King Bhumibol Memorial Day · 23 Oct Chulalongkorn Day | — |
| November | — | — |
| December | 5 Dec H.M. King Bhumibol's Birthday / National Day / Father's Day · 10 Dec Constitution Day · 31 Dec New Year's Eve | 7 Dec Substitution holiday |
This table is cut from the same dataset as the full-year calendar. For a 12-month grid with every holiday named, see the 2026 off-peak calendar — that page carries the complete table and a calendar image you can save.
What a holiday changes, and what it does not
Four points, so nothing has to be guessed.
Unchanged: your customer class and the progressive tariff. Your class is set by how you use power and how many units you use in a month, not by the calendar. A holiday does not move you into a different class.
Unchanged: the Ft and the monthly service charge. The current-period Ft is 0.1623 THB/unit and is announced per four-month period, not per day; the 3.95 THB/unit system average behaves the same way. Background: what the Ft charge is.
Changed: which hours are billed at which rate — TOU meters only, and only on those 19 days. On a weekday off-peak runs 22:00–09:00 the next morning; on an announced holiday it covers all 24 hours. Saturdays and Sundays behave the same way.
Changed: how "working days" are counted. Anything the utility quotes in working days — inspection and meter installation, for example — slides out by however many holidays fall inside the window. If you are about to file, avoid a run of consecutive holidays. Steps and fees: applying for a meter, cost and process.
On payment, a holiday does not close every channel: online and authorised payment agents are not tied to counter hours. Your own due date, however, is the one printed on the bill — do not infer it from the calendar. The channels are summarised at where to pay an electricity bill.
The limits of this page — what is verified and what you must call to confirm
The 19-day and 3-day lists above were checked against MEA Announcement 32/2568 and compared cell by cell with PEA's own off-peak calendar image. The full counter-closure list, however, is the cabinet's public-holiday announcement, which this page does not reproduce — its full 2026 text was not verified for this page, and it contains at least one day that appears in neither table above: วันพืชมงคล, the Royal Ploughing Ceremony Day, whose date is set each year by royal announcement. It is a government holiday and the ERC notification names it explicitly as *not* off-peak. So if you are travelling to an office, treat the 22 dates above as a "do not go yet" list and confirm with your local office — MEA 1130 or PEA 1129 — before you leave.
Who wrote this
Frank Lee, Founder of CapSolar — a commercial solar design-and-build company in Thailand with 80+ MWp installed across 150+ projects, 100+ clients served and 85K+ tons of CO₂ avoided. Scheduling load against on-peak and off-peak windows is monthly work here on real buildings, so the tables on this page come from the announcements we actually work from, not from a bank-holiday list.
FAQ
A plant or building that runs all day? Solar lands exactly on the on-peak hours
The TOU on-peak window overlaps almost exactly with the strongest sunlight of the day. CapSolar will assess for free how much of that window your building could cover.