Accordingly, the competitive electricity generation market has gained such significant results as: Power system has been safely and reliably operated, supplied sufficient power for socio-economic pro development; there has been no incident caused by the market’s operation, ensuring power supply to the national power system.
The market’s operation has improved the transparency and fairness in mobilizing power sources, set up the mobilization schedule through the price quotation by plants, any plants with low electricity price will be firstly mobilized then those with higher price until the demand of the load is met.
Da Nhim - Ham Thuan - Da Mi Hydropower Joint Stock Company is one of units efficiently operating competitive electricity generation market
Furthermore, power generation companies have been aware of the importance, more proactive in operating, shortening the time of repair and maintenance, reducing operating costs, proactive in price offering to improve production efficiency, contributing to improving the overall efficiency of the whole system.
By the end of September 2018, there were 87 power plants joining transaction in the market, increasing by 2.7 times over the figure at the initial operation of the market in July 2012 (only 31 power plants).
However, according to the assessment of Electricity Regulatory Authority of Vietnam, it couldn’t be deniable that there appeared some difficulties during the constructing and operating process of the market such as certain limitations in the infrastructure of information technology for the operation of power system - electricity market, the number of hydropower plants has taken a large proportion, while hydrological inputs are unpredictable, thus, the planning for annual operation of electricity market also contains many complex factors.
The congestion of 500kV transmission line during peak cycles also causes a great impact on market operation outcomes; even in rainy seasons, although the available capacity of the Northern hydropower plants is relatively high, power can not be fully transmitted to the South.
In addition to internal issues of the Power sector, the market is also facing great challenges from external factors, particularly the supply of primary fuel (coal, gas) for power generation regarded as the extremely crucial one. Specifically: Gas-turbine power plant clusters (Phu My cluster, Nhon Trach cluster, etc.) share a gas supply system but there are many different constraints burdening on gas price (underwriting price, higher underwriting price, change in gas when the new one is mixed, etc.). The increase in input fuel price (coal/gas) causes the pressure of raising price on the electricity market.