The Proposal for adjusting the National Power Development Planning

Deputy Prime Minister Hoang Trung Hai chairs the meeting.

Based on overall assessment of the current situation of power system in Vietnam, situation of implementation of Power Development Planning  number seven (PDP VII), socio-economic overview and electricity  demand forecast a scenario for adjusting the power system planning and regional power grid interconnection has been  proposed.

According to the report, in 2011-2015 period average growth rate of electricity consumption of the country is rather low in comparison with the forecast of PDP VII 

(sale electricity increases 9.9% vs 14.1% and maximal load capacity - 9.1% vs 13.9%).

From 2011 to 2013, there about 9,900 MW generation capacities have been put into operation that reached around 95% amount in comparison with the suggestion of PDP VII. Today, Vietnamese Power System has a rather high crude reserve margin (48%) but it is unbalanced by the regions: While the Northern and Central regions  have a high reserve of 46-87%, the Southern region has a very low or even no one.

Regarding developing transmission grids: it was implemented  about  57% of transmission line amount and 66% of transformer substation capacities of  the 500 kV grid, while the figure for the 220kV power grid is 22% and 35%, respectively.

Based on forecasting GDP growth rate in the coming periods, the adjustment project establishes two power demand scenarios as the sale electricity growth rate of 7.4 - 10.5%; and 8.1 - 11.6%. The total power capacity of the country will be about 60,400 MW by 2020 and 114.500 MW by 2030, reduced about 15,000 MW and 29,000 MW respectively, in comparison with PDP VII.

Regarding 500 kV grid system, it would be not so much changed in comparison with PDP VII, except increasing capacities of  Son La,  O Mon transformer substations and building new stations Pleiku, Duc Hoa up to 2020 and constructing a 500 kV double circuit line from a gas-fired thermal power plant in Central Seacoast Region to High Land (Tay Nguyen) and Krong Buk 500 kV transformer substation, in  2021-2030 period.

Calculating the fuel demand for thermal power plants, the adjustment project has showed that the demand of coal and gas in power sector up to 2030 will exceed too much over the domestic supplying capability, thereby fuel import will be naturally, among that a total import amount of coal may reach 577 million tons and liquid natural gas (LNG) – 24 million tons. 

At the meeting, Deputy Prime Minister Hoang Trung Hai and the members of the Steering Board discussed concrete contents of the adjustment project and gave the steering opinions, according to that, it is necessary to update information closely with actual situation of socio-economic development, calculate carefully and trustfully demand forecast, power and energy balances in order to define, as correctly as possibly, the demand of coal, gas and nuclear energy, and investment costs for development of power plants and grids. It may also lease an international consulting company to assess some of issues for us to have a more multilateral and full view on our energy development program up to 2030.

VietnamEnergy.vn