An additional 16 power plants will join Vietnam’s competitive energy
generation market this year, bringing the total number of such plants
to 48.
The country launched the market last July in a
move to shift the State’s monopoly of power supply to a more
competitive market system.
As such, power plants with
capacities reaching 30MW or above (except wind or thermal powered ones)
are eligible to join the market by selling their product to the Electric
Power Trading Company (EPTC) under the management of State power firm
Vietnam Electricity (EVN).
EPTC – the single buyer in
the country’s power market – in turn sells off electricity to
distribution or retail companies from whom customers can buy electricity
for daily use.
Speaking at a meeting on February 21,
Deputy Prime Minister Hoang Trung Hai asked relevant agencies to
finalise procedures allowing the participation of the new sellers, thus
helping to raise the power market’s competitiveness.
Hai said that the initiative is creating transparency by mobilising
power sources and ensuring that selling prices are based on supply and
demand rather than the subsidised mechanisms that were adopted in the
past.
Under the seven-month-old system, power plants
which offer lower prices will be given priority to sell their
electricity. A network among plants and the EPTC has been set up to
update market information and estimate demand and potential supply.
At present, among 73 generators on the market, 32 generators directly
sell power to the single distributors. Meanwhile, indirect traders
include multi-purpose hydro-power plants, East Start Reserve, Cold Stat
Reserve and Reliability Must Runs.
The head of
Electricity of Vietnam’s Market management Department Tran Dang Khoa
said that the new market participants need to improve system security,
flood control at hydro-power plants and the water supply for lowland
rivers.
Vietnam’s electricity market is planned to
develop in three stages – a competitive power generation market
(completed by 2014), a competitive wholesale market (2014-10) and a
competitive retail market (after 2022).-VNA