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.
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur 
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