Vietnam Electricity eyes wind power import from Laos

Vietnam Electricity wants to import wind power from Laos as it seeks to combat a looming shortage in the northern region.

Several wind power investors in Laos with a combined capacity of 4,149 megawatts want to sell electricity to Vietnam, the national utility said in a report to the Ministry of Industry and Trade.

The imports will help bridge a supply gap in the northern region between 2024 and 2030, especially in summer when water levels plummet in hydropower dams.

Power Development Plan 8 focuses on the development of liquefied natural gas and renewable power sources, which are costly, and does not prioritize cheaper sources such as hydropower.

This means importing power from Laos will help reduce costs somewhat.

Laos’s maximum wind power feed-in tariff is 6.95 U.S. cents per kilowatt-hour for plants that become operational by the end of 2025, which is much more competitive than Vietnam’s 8.5 cents for onshore and 9.8 cents for offshore plants that went on stream before November 2021. But the Laos price is higher than for some plants in Vietnam that went on stream after that date. Their tariffs start at 6.42 cents.

Some hydropower plants in Laos with whom it has signed purchase agreements would only begin generating power after 2025, meaning alternative sources are needed in the next two years, EVN said.

It called on the government to install more transmission lines to increase imports from Laos.

In the first 11 months of this year Vietnam’s electricity imports – from Laos but also China — accounted for 1.5% of total supply.