Ability to release capacity for wind power and solar power in 2022

As of December 2019, the total installed capacity of Vietnam’s power system is about 54.9 GW, of which coal-fired thermal power accounts for 36%, hydropower has the share of 30.3%, natural gas has 13.3%, renewables including wind power have 0.7%, solar power has 8.4%, small hydropower has 6.6%. In the past 6 months, Vietnam’s Power source development policy has significantly changed in terms of both the Communist Party and the Government’s short-term and long-term orientations.

Most recently, in June 2020, the Prime Minister approved an addition of 7 GW of wind power (Document No. 693/TTg-CN dated June 9th, 2020 and Document No. 795/TTg-CN dated June 25th, 2020) and 10.3 GW of solar power (Proposal No. 1968/TTr-BCT dated March 19th, 2020) to the Power Development Plan. A large number of wind and solar power projects are simultaneously added in the Central and Southern regions. This requires an assessment of integrating variable renewable energy (VRE) to the transmission grid and upgrading of the transmission grid in the short term to ensure synchronous development between power sources and grid.

The study, therefore, aims at evaluating the power evacuation capacity of the grid to 2022 to put forward recommendations on the generating capacity of renewable energy plants, including wind power, and solutions for the transmission grid to meet the operating requirements