HÀ NỘI — The US$1.75-billion Vĩnh Tân 1 thermal power project will begin operations ahead of its schedule owing to concerns about the risk of power shortage in the southern provinces in future.

This is the largest project in the country made with Chinese investment and involvement.

According to latest reports, the first unit of the project will begin commercial operations in July 2018, five months earlier than its schedule.

Phan Ngọc Cẩm Thành, deputy director of Vĩnh Tân 1, told the National Steering Committee for Power Development that after 1,025 consecutive construction days, the project was 93 per cent complete.

“We target to push forward the date for commercial operations,” he said.

On April 18, the first unit of Vĩnh Tân 1 successfully connected to the national grid for the first time and met all standards during a test.

Đinh Thế Phúc, member of the National Steering Committee for Power Development and deputy director of the Electricity Regulatory Authority of Việt Nam under the Ministry of Industry and Trade, said Vĩnh Tân 1 thermal power plant had a huge generation capacity and was expected to help increase energy supply in the country.

The 1,240MW project is the first thermal power plant in Việt Nam to apply the pulverised coal combustion technology. It will play an important role in supplying power to the country’s southern part as there have been delays in the operationalisation of the Sông Hậu 1 and Long Phú 1 thermal power plants.

These projects, in the Mekong River Delta provinces of Sóc Trăng and Hậu Giang, respectively, are designed to produce an annual 1,200MW of power each, but they are many years behind schedule. Việt Nam’s State-run oil and gas group PetroVietnam invested in both the projects.

Vĩnh Tân 1 is expected to generate more than 7.2 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity per year, increasing the southern region’s electricity supply capacity and helping reduce its dependence on hydropower, especially in the dry season or during droughts.

The power demand in Việt Nam is expected to see a remarkable increase of more than 10 per cent per annum in the coming years due to rising population and economic growth. Southern Việt Nam in particular, the country’s largest economic bloc, which includes HCM City, faces a critical situation in relation to the current imbalance between the existing supply and the increasing demand for electricity. This calls for urgent development of power generation infrastructure in the region.

In his recent tour to the southern provinces, Deputy Prime Minister Trịnh Đình Dũng underlined that accelerating the pace of constructing power plants, especially in the south, as well as upgrading transmission projects would remain a prime task for years to come. — VNS