According to Nguyen Duc Ninh, deputy director of the National Load Dispatch Centre, by mid-April this year, just four solar energy projects in the country were operational providing total capacity of 150MW. By May 26, the figure increased to 34 projects with the combined capacity of 2200MW.
Many solar power projects are scheduled to be connected to the national power projects by the end of June this year.
The centre is expected to put into more 54 projects of this kind into operation by June 30, meaning that around 10 projects to be connected to the national power grid per week on average.
With the annual growth of 10% in power demand, Vietnam needs to add roughly 3,500-4,000MW of power per year. However, in the next two years around 2,000- 2,500MW of traditional power and 4,000MW of renewable energy are forecasted to be supplemented.
Experts warned that one of the difficulties for solar power projects was weather dependence which would lead to low stability.
Most of the solar power projects are located in six localities in the central and southern regions.
Under a Prime Ministerial Decision dated April 11, 2017 on encouraging solar power, those projects connected to the national grid from June 1, 2017 to June 30, 2019 would be eligible to sell electricity to EVN at VND2,086 (9.35 US cent) per kWh), excluding Value Added Tax, and adjusted according to the Vietnamese VND-US dollar exchange rate.