Additional 41 Power Plants to Be Built in Northern Vietnam

Vietnam, an emerging economy that is thirsting for power, is planning to build 41 more small-scaled hydropower plants with combined capacity of around 218 megawatts in northern provinces in the next five years, the Ministry of Industry (MoI) said.

 

Under the plan, local power industry will pump about VND3.67 trillion ($229 million) into these works, which are expected to satisfy the increasing power demand of the whole region as well as to improve irrigation for the local agriculture sector.

 

Of the projects, 37 hydroelectric plants with combined capacity of some 185MW will be set up in provinces that border China with total investment of VND3.1 trillion ($193.7 million), MoI said.

 

Four other works are 3.2MW Nam Cat plant costing VND60 billion ($3.75 million) in Bac Kan province, 4MW Nam Gie plant worth VND72.2 billion ($4.5 million) in Lai Chau province, 15.4MW Muong Kim plant with investment of VND244 billion ($15.25 million) in Yen Bai province, and Ngoi San No1 plant with capacity of 10.5MW worth VND194.1 billion ($12 million) in Lao Cai province.

 

Vietnam will require 93 billion kWh of electricity in 2010 compared to 45 billion kWh currently to meet the country’s growing power consumption of 16-17 per cent a year.