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Nguyen Anh Tuan of the Vietnam Institute of Energy has said that the country will soon face a serious power shortage if it fails to come up with increased power generation capacity. He said that additions to the grid had reached only 69 percent of the target over the last four years due to lack of funding, red tape, increasing costs of fuel and other inputs, difficulties in land acquisition, and investors “lack of capability”.
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Tuan said that the shortage would continue despite a reduction in the annual increase in demand, due to the global recession, of only 13.7 percent, down from the forecast 16-17 percent. The shortage will be most serious in the south of the country in 2015, where demand will increase the most, but with no additional sources.
The Ministry of Industry and Trade said 2900 MW were added to the national grid last year, of which plants in the south contributed only 650 MW. Vietnam imported 1000 MW from China, accounting for 3-4 percent of domestic power production. The Ministry said that Vietnam plans to import more electricity through its investment in several power plants in Laos and Cambodia, but these are thought to be significantly behind their construction schedules.
Tuan said that in addition to difficulties in bringing new power plants on line, the installation of power lines and transformer stations for the grid have been held up by bottlenecks in finance and difficulties in land acquisition and compensation for residents.