Reporter (Rp): June 2019 is the time for investors to energize a series of solar power projects to get the price incentives from the Government. Could you tell us how EVN/A0 has prepared for this plan?
Mr. Nguyen Duc Ninh - Deputy Director of the National Power System Moderation Center
Mr. Nguyen Duc Ninh: With the government's incentive and preferential mechanism for prices (Decision No. 11/2017/QD-TTg by the Prime Minister - Rp), a large number of investors are racing for being granted the COD Certificate before June 30th, 2019.
According to the plan, there are 88 solar power plants to be energized in the second quarter of 2019.
By the end of May 2019, there were 47 solar power projects with a capacity of 2,300MW connected to the national power network. It is expected that the remaining projects will be energized in June 2019 with a total capacity of 2,500MW, resulting in huge workloads at the moderation levels when an average of 10 plants are energized per week.
In 65 years of the construction and development of electricity industry, the new power system has 147 plants with the capacity of 30MW or more. But only in these 3 months, there will be 88 plants connected into power network - this is a record in the history of Viet Nam's electricity industry.
To meet this historic workload record, EVN/A0 has established a working group for solar power energizing for the unified, continuous Dispatch and direction throughout the moderating system. A0 mobilized its manpower to work regardless of weekends and holidays, carried out the transfer of human resources to support the departments with high workload at the Southern Power Dispatch Center and Central Power Dispatch Center.
EVN has strengthened the application of IT, completed and put into use the website for negotiating, signing technical agreements and electricity trading contracts at: http://ppa.evn.com.vn. Thereby publicizing the process of shortening the time for submitting and handling dossiers of units.
Especially EVN regularly directs and supervises A0 in proactively contacting and guiding investors of solar power plants to coordinate in providing documents for energizing and testing work. Every day, A0 must receive and exchange about 5,000-6,000 messages with investors of power plants, constantly from 6 AM to 12 PM.
Rp: How did the series of such grid-connected solar power projects make it difficult for the system, sir?
Mr. Nguyen Duc Ninh: Energizing series of solar power stations with the majority concentrated in the Central and the South region will contribute to supplementing the power sources, reducing the energy shortage in the South. However, solar power projects are mainly concentrated in Tay Ninh, Khanh Hoa, Ninh Thuan, Binh Thuan and Dak Lak provinces. This is a low-load area, causing great pressure on the ability of loading power generated from the solar power source to the grid, many grid connection works in the region are likely to be in full and overloaded condition.
Despite a valuable additional power source, a great number of plants operating in a record short duration, and mainly concentrating in the provinces having the low-load, significantly affecting the system’s operation. While solar power project can be completed in a few months, power synchronization can be completed after a few years because of the difficulties in the time duration for investment procedures and construction sites.
Under this situation, EVN has proposed the Government for the supplement and development of power network projects. At the same time, to urge units to speed up the construction progress of related power network projects, contributing to relieve the capacity of solar power plants.
The project of floating solar power plant in Da Mi reservoir was successfully energized on May 27, 2019
Rp: Besides the advantages, how does this energy source cause challenges in the operation of the power system, sir??
Mr. Nguyen Duc Ninh: With the growing power demand at around 10%/year, Viet Nam needs to supplement about 3,500-4,000MW of new power capacity each year. However, in the next 2 years, there will be about 2,000-2,500MW of traditional power and about 4,000-5,000MW of renewable energy with instability added to the system. This actual situation causes many difficulties in operating the power system to balance between the supply and demand, ensuring the national energy security.
As per statistics of A0 for the operated solar power projects, the generation capacity can vary from 60-80%, in a period of 5-10 minutes. The changes happen randomly according to weather conditions. Projects in the same area often vary simultaneously. Meanwhile, the characteristics of electrical system operating always need to maintain the balance between source and load. With such capacity variation, the power system always needs to maintain a certain amount of standby power to adjust the corresponding frequency, causing difficulties and increasing costs in operation.
In addition, the capacity of renewable energy sources cannot be proactively mobilized when needed for the peak load time. The solar power source has peaks in the range of 12:00– 13:00, which does not coincide with the peak loads of the power system (at 10:00 AM and 2:00 PM).
This is a huge challenge in the context that Vietnam’s electricity system has only a few standby power sources as presently.
Reporter: Thank you very much, Sir