The Ministry of Industry and Trade of Vietnam (MOIT) released an updated draft (the New Draft) of the Decision of the Prime Minister on the mechanism for encouraging the development of solar power projects in Vietnam (the Draft Decision).

MOIT proposed plan one price electricity for applying nationwide along with the threshold of total additional capacity of the new solar power projects to 2023 by 6,300MW.

This electricity price is applied to part or all of the grid-connected solar power plants with commercial operation date from July 1, 2019 to December 31, 2021

Ministry of Industry and Trade (MOIT) evaluated that the option of one electricity price, there are 2 big advantages: (1) FIT mechanism (Feed-in tariff) is simple because there is only one price and (2) no need higher support in areas with low radiation potential.

However, the State management also acknowledged two major disadvantages of this policy. First is less encouraging for projects in the North, Central. Secondly, due to the concentration of many solar power projects in areas with good radiation potential, there is a risk of overloading the transmission grid.

Sharing with Thanh Nien, Mr. To Quoc Tru, Director of the Energy Consulting Center (Vietnam Energy Association), said that because of the low radiation intensity in the North and the Central and same price issue t the South, the Solar industry in North will difficult to develop.

Furthermore, in the period of 2026-2030, it is warned that the North cannot balance the supply and demand and has to be received electricity from the central region via inter-central transmission grid, so that it needs to encourage.

Source: https://thanhnien.vn