Foreign Power Plant Jolts National Grid

The country's only foreign-owned power plant is about to bring an extra two generators on-line, making it capable of providing up to 22.5 per cent of all electricity used in the South, company officials announced last week.

The $273 million Hiep Phuoc oil-fired power plant, situated 20km south of Ho Chi Minh City, announced it should be triple its power output by the end of July.

Hiep Phouc, the only 100 per cent foreign-owned Build-Operate-Own (BOO) power station in Vietnam, began operations with its first 125 megawatt generator in February.

The second and third of its 125 megawatt generators are now being put through final tests and will help reduce Vietnam's reliance on hydro-power, Tsuei Shuh Ji, President of Hiep Phuoc Power Co Ltd. (owned by Taipei-based CT&D Group), said.

"Nearly 80 per cent of the country's electricity currently comes from hydro, which is much too high because you cannot rely on there being enough rain." he said.

"This percentage needs to go down to about 50 per cent. But at the current rate, Vietnam can only approach this figure in about five years becuase too many other power plants exist only on paper, " he warned.

Vietnams's current overall maximum electricity generation capacity stands at around 4,700 megawatts, but only is every unit works at optimum performance.

On average, every person in Vietnam receives not much more than 250 kilowatt hours per year of energy, according to Hiep Phuoc figures, which compares poorly with Malaysia's 1996 figure (1,135 kWh per year per person), Taiwans's 1993 figure (4,600 kWh per year per person) or even Hong Kong's 1990 figure (4,253 kWh per year per person).

The Ministry of Industry recently announced that Vietnam needed an extra 100 to 200 million more kWh of electicity to keep pace with industrial and private demand. However, in some quarters of the power development sector, this estimate was seen as ultra-conservative.

A second phase of generators was being planned for Hiep Phuoc, which would nearly double the plant's capacity to 675 megawatts, according to Frances Ba, CT&D's Vice President.

"A reliable electricity supply goes hand in hand with the development of a country. We are visited by many big Western corporations which want to provide power plants for Vietnam and we always share information with them because we want to see this country's economy develop to its potential," she said.

Many other foreign entities have failed to agree on suitable terms for the construction of power plants.

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