Vietnam will soon face a serious power shortage if it fails to come up
with increased power generation, an analyst has warned.
Nguyen Anh Tuan of the Institute
of Energy said additions to the grid had reached only 69 per cent of the target
in the four years to 2010 "due to lack of funding, red tape, increasing
cost of fuel and other inputs, difficulties in land acquisition and investors'
lack of capability".
Speaking at a power conference in
Ho Chi Minh City last week, Tuan said the shortage would continue despite an
annual increase in demand of only 13.7 per cent instead of the forecast 16-17
per cent, due to the recession.
The shortage would be most
serious in the south in 2015 where the demand would increase the most but with
no additional sources.
The Ministry of Industry and
Trade said 2,900 megawatts was added to national grid last year, of which
plants in the south contributed only 650 megawatts. Vietnam imported about
1,000 megawatts or 5 billion kilowatts per hour from China, accounting for 3-4
per cent of domestic power production.
Meanwhile, Vietnam planned to
import more electricity through its investment in several power plants in Lao
and Cambodia, but they were reportedly behind schedule, Tuan said.
Besides difficulties in bring new
power sources on line, installation of powerlines and transformer stations for
the electricity grid was held up by bottlenecks in finance and difficulties in
land acquisition and compensation for residents.
It took three to five years to
complete a grid project, most of the time being for land clearance and
compensation negotiations, he said.
Head of the institute's Electrical
Grid Expansion Department Ho Thi Kim Nga agreed. He said the existing 500-220
kilo volt and 110 kilo volt line in Ho Chi Minh City was already seriously
overloaded, yet demand was expected to increase at 12.9 per cent a year.
The city planned to build and
upgrade grids to 2015 with an estimated investment of 21 trillion Vietnamese
dong (US$1.2 billion).
Head of Planning Department under
the city's Electricity Company Bui Trung Kien said the city had approved 25.5
trillion dong to develop the city's power plan until 2015.
Nearly one fifth of the approved
amount was the from the company's equity and the rest came from credit
institutions, including the World Bank, Asian Development Bank and Japanese
International Development Agency, Kien said.
However, incomplete planning of
other infrastructure, such as transport, affected construction of the
electricity facilities, he said. Moreover, in many districts and industrial
zones, electricity facilities were not allocated enough land, causing
difficulties to make improvements to city grid.
In Vietnam, hydropower now
accounted for 35 per cent of supply, thermal electricity for 23 per cent, and
gas plants for 31 per cent, Kien said.
"To improve the situation by
2020, nuclear electricity will have to contribute 2 per cent. Otherwise, we
must increase renewable energy supply from 3.2 per cent to 5 per cent."
At that time, hydropower would
make up to only 20 per cent of supply "because hydropower depends so much
on the weather", Tuan from Institute of Energy said.
The electricity master plan
encouraged construction of small hydropower plants for local supply and focused
on adequate supply of coal and gas for generating thermal power, imported power
and renewable energy.
Under the plan, most rural
households would have access to electricity by 2020.
US$1 = 20,850 Vietnamese dong
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