Amplish

Living 45 km North of Chiang Mai, we have almost daily short cut-outs and over the year at least 5-10 longer ones of a few hours each, depending on the strength of the rainy season and the root system of trees lining the roads. We are all setup for it, with UPS's for all sensitive electronics, emergency lights and a hard-wired 5 kW generator with an automatic transfer switch. We only turn it on if the power is out for more than 30 minutes (fuel is expensive) and it doesn't have to work very hard, PEA are normally fairly quick reparing the damage even at night. There are 2 food processing factories nearby that are dependent on uninterupted power supply, so PEA have become a bit more responsive since they started operating. Occaisionally we still get a whopper of a black-out that lasts more than 12 hours. A few years back we were without power for almost 2 full days, when a truck driver crashed into a road-side electricity pillar, which subsequently dragged down another 5. It is just the way it is where we live, our side of the road, tends to have more power outages than the neighbours on the opposite side of the road. Always has been. Part of the charm of living in Thailand...

The only thing that makes sense to me is, if 'local io' refers to an agent the OP is using. There are no local io's, that are based outside immigration offices. It would be useful, but I never heard of it in Thailand. It would still be helpful to know what visa or extension the OP is talking about.

I must be missing something. Referring to forest fires as hotspots is common practice, I use it that way on a day-to-day basis. I do admit not being a native speaker and mainly working with government agencies in South-East Asia.

Exactly, that is what I did, made a TP registration for arrival 29 April. After getting the approval I changed tickets to arrival on May 1 and cancelled the SHA+ hotel. TP is valid for 7 days before and after the registered arrival. After my application for a COE was approved last year, the quarantine was reduced from 7 days to just one (as well as a change to TP). I simply cancelled the 7 day quarantine booking and made a one night booking with the same hotel. That was accepted and I expect that for the change on May 1, the same applies. The rule change is for arrival from May 1 onwards. In the past reductions in quarantine period have been linked to the date of arrival, not when the registration was made.