New tools to counter a rising power crisis

The Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT) last week reported that power consumption grew 1.8 times from 2005, to 981 kilowatt hours per person per year in late 2010. Power generation increased an average of 13.7 per cent per year during 2006-2010, doubling the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate in the meantime.

According to the MoIT, a great loss of power via poor quality transmission systems had added more stress to the country’s supply shortages. Nguyen Dinh Hiep, general director of the MoIT’s science & technology department, said supply shortages had forced the country to utilise all existing sources via every kind of transmission lines, including unqualified low and middle-voltage systems.

“Constant utilisation of the North-South 500kV transmission line in both dry and rainy seasons and low voltage lines built during the 1960s-1970s has resulted in great losses,” Hiep said.

MoIT data showed that power losses would be around 9 per cent of Vietnam’s overall 93.4 billion kWh power output in 2010. The loss output would be around 8.37 billion kWh this year, nearly double the output of the country’s third largest Lai Chau hydropower plant, standing at 4.7 billion kWh per year, to be built on December 22, 2010.

Power losses in transmission and usage were reported at 10 per cent in 2009 and 9.35 per cent in 2008.

Vietnam Electricity Association (VEA) chairman Duc Hung said the upgrading and building of existing and new transmission systems would be the electricity industry’s most urgent task in the coming years, to reduce losses and help ensure a more stable supply for local consumption.

Power savings would also be focused across the country to help ease supply constraints. The MoIT and the Electricity of Vietnam (EVN), the biggest state-run power generator, will continue to support the use of energy saving equipment, including compact lamp and solar energy water boilers across the country. Vietnam reported to have saved some 4.03 billion kWh of power during 2006-2010, which was equivalent to 1.4 per cent of the commercial power output. Of that, nearly 1.2 billion kWh of power were saved in 2010. More than 40 million compact lamps were sold to the local market by major producers, including the Rang Dong, Dien Quang and Philips companies last year.

More than 20,000 solar energy water heater products were marketed in Vietnam in 2008. The figure was 30,000 units last year and might  increase by 20 per cent this year.

Vietnam has remained in a serious shortage of supplies for domestic consumption, which is anticipated to grow at an average 15 per cent in the following years, the final stage for the country to achieve its industrialisation goal in 2020. The country will have an overall 20,900 megawatts of installed capacity until late 2010. Of which, the new capacity built during the 2006-2010 period has reached 10,400MW, almost doubling 2005’s capacity.