EVN NPC: Weathering Difficulties to Reach Success

Entering the year 2010, the Vietnamese economy started stronger revival. Recovering production and business activities lead to stronger demand for electricity. Meanwhile, long droughts lead to water shortage for hydroelectric plants, thus worsening the chronic national power thirst. In spite of encountering difficulties, with strong effort and drastic direction of the corporation's board of directors and provincial power companies, especially efficient and opportune solutions, the Northern Power Corporation (EVN NPC) impressively completes its assigned tasks in the best manner.

 

With the task of providing electricity to socioeconomic activities in 27 Northern provinces in the midst of growing energy demand, the corporation has to manage a large network of electric lines and transformers. Besides, the firm has to continuously extend power lines to remote areas in the assigned region.

 

Moreover, for the sake of its development goals, EVN NPC has expanded its business scopes like hydropower plant construction, telecommunication service development, and electric equipment manufacturing. One of most effective measures of EVN NPC is to accelerate production emulation movement and promote initiatives and improvements and savings of its staffs.

 

On April 2, 2010 in Hanoi, the Northern Power Corporation (EVN NPC) was officially established from the restructuring of Electric Power Company 1 and holding the Electricity of Vietnam’s equity at Hai Phong Electric Power Company, Hai Duong Electric Power Company and Ninh Binh Electric Power Company. Addressing at the debut ceremony, Deputy Prime Minister Hoang Trung Hai said the new model would help EVN NPC to prepare for better participation in the electricity market and lay the groundwork for long-term development.

 

At an interview with Vietnam Business Forum’s reporters on challenges of the new operating model, Mr Nguyen Phuc Vinh, President and General Director of EVN NPC, emphasised the importance of upholding tradition of its forerunner - Electric Power Company 1, the cradle of the electricity industry while confirming that the crucial transformation to the holding company model will help the company adopt modern governance to boost operating efficiency to complete the goal of making Vietnam an industrialised company by 2020.

 

Currently, EVN NPC not only supplies electricity for production and business activities but also ensures electricity accessibility for 99.5 percent of districts, 96.9 percent of communes and 93.7 percent of households in the covered area. Thus, EVN NPC becomes a leading company in providing electricity for rural areas.

 

According to its business strategy in the 2010 - 2015 period, EVN NPC will maintain and expand its electricity selling market shares, widen 110-KV or lower power grids to meet annual surcharge growth of 15 - 17 percent, focus on exploiting current telecommunication services, develop electric equipment and material manufacturing, and expand real estate trading, travel and hotel services, and financial investments.

The establishment of Northern Power Corporation will create a development breakthrough because it has more business autonomy, gradually calculates and publicises electricity costs and strengthens its distribution in the upcoming competitive power market approved by the Prime Minister.

 

To boost up corporate governance, EVN NPC, with its new active mechanism, has quickly stabilised its new structure, working regulations and financial regime and robustly accelerated decentralisation to grant more autonomy to its affiliated companies and every staff to work at highest capacity and efficiency. Particularly, the corporation has defined its crucial task of building a modern management model. According to Deputy Prime Minister Hoang Trung Hai, EVN NPC as well as other power companies must take science and technology as drives to make breakthroughs. The electricity sector must take the lead in technological innovations to reduce power losses and improve efficiency. At the same time, it must ensure minimum impacts on environments.

 

In its management, EVN NPC has applied the ISO 9001:2000 quality management system and regularly examined technical and sales management to deal with shortcomings and boost operating efficiency.

In addition to strictly implement the Directive 12 of the Ministry of Industry and Trade and the Electricity of Vietnam (EVN) on electric conservation and supply, EVN NPC’s units speed up dissemination of benefits of power conservation and efficiency, adversities of power shortage caused by droughts, and encourage customers to use electricity in the most economical and efficient manner, etc.

 

In 2010, EVN NPC has strived to produce more than 24,238 million kWh of commercial electricity. According to Mr Nguyen Vinh Phuc, the corporation’s member units must exert their all resources to accelerate the replacement of electricity meters in covered areas to bring power loss to a minimum, gradually use single-phase electronic meters to increase accuracy, successfully implement the CMIS 2.0 system and increase the efficiency of IT applications in power production and business.

 

From the end of this year, apart from production and business targets, EVN NPC will complete several key indicators as follows: Repairing the power grid to ensure stable and safe operations during stormy rainy seasons, speed up the commencement of commercial production in new power projects, accelerate the construction of 100 KV power projects, enhance the personal and collective responsibility, and increase incomes for employees.