Vietnam faces long summer of blackouts as demand outstrips supply

Jun 27, 2007, 10:07 GMT

Hanoi - Vietnam's state electricity agency will begin nationwide rolling power outages from July through September and has called on people not to use air-conditioners to ease the power shortage, local media said Wednesday.

The power crisis has been caused by rapid growth of the economy and demand for electricity, which has outstripped supply even though Vietnam has tried to fill the gap by purchasing electricity from neighbouring Laos and China.

On Wednesday, the state-run Electricity of Vietnam (EVN) officially announced in state media what most feared was true: the country cannot meet power needs and must ration power, scheduling blackouts in certain areas at certain times each day to meet demand elsewhere.

Tran Quoc Anh, EVN's deputy general director, called on Vietnamese to conserve power to ease the shortages.

'State agencies and households should not use air-conditioners to help ease the power shortage this time,' Anh told Nhan Dan (The People), the ruling Communist Party's official newspaper.

It was unclear whether Vietnam's newly prosperous urban elite - for whom air-conditioning is one of the first luxury purchases - would comply in summer weather with temperatures of up to 40 degrees.

According to Nhan Dan, the rolling outages were made necessary by problems with one of the country's biggest generators - the Phu My gas-fueled plant in southern Ba Ria Vung Tau province, which makes up 34 per cent of the country's total power generation.

Phu My will be shut down or run below capacity for maintenance July 1-6, August 29-September 16 and September 29-30.

'As there is no backup system, the country may lack up to 1,000 megawatts at peak hours,' Anh was quoted as saying.

Even buying electricity from China and Laos, the country expects a shortfall of up to 200,000 megawatt hours this year, according to Dan Tri newspaper.

EVN has not yet announced the schedule for the rolling power outages and local power officials also were unsure of the plan.

'It will depend on how much power EVN will assign to Hanoi,' Duong Quoc Tuan, head of the Public Relation Department of Hanoi Power Company, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa by telephone.

EVN plans to import more power from China and require its power plants to operate at full capacity to relieve the problem.

Even before the gas supplying system is shut down for maintenance, there have already been rolling power cuts throughout the country since the beginning of this year due to the lack of water for hydroelectricity plants, from which Vietnam gets 30 per cent of its power.

'There have been small partial power cuts in different places in the city recently,' Tuan admitted.

Vietnam's power shortages are likely to get worse before they get better.

Vietnam's electricity consumption is slated to grow by 20 per cent this year. The country faces a shortage of 4 million to 10 million megawatt hours by 2009 without massive new investments.

At least 30 large power-plant projects in the works, including a giant, 2,400-megawatt hydropower dam in northwestern Son La province, which should be able to produce 1.2 million megawatt hours per year.

However, the Son La plant won't come online until at least 2012 and it's unclear whether the country will be able to meet domestic demand.

Also, this month the lead economist of the World Bank criticized EVN's plans to attract new power-plant investment by creating a national, for-profit 'single buyer' to purchase electricity from power producers and resell it to distributors, who would provide it to consumers.

EVN defended its proposal, but Vietnam's Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung has ordered a review of the single-buyer plan.