Mr. Luu Viet Tien
Reporter: Sir, could you give an overview of the development of Vietnam’s power transmission grid system over the past 10 years?
Mr. Luu Viet Tien: Over the past 10 years, the national power transmission system has made a great progress in scale, quality and technology level. EVNNPT has operated safely, continuously and stably the national power transmission system with an average increase in power transmission output of 10.95% per year. Up to now, the system has reached all provinces and cities in the country and connected to the power transmission grids of China, Laos and Cambodia. Compared with the time of establishment of EVNPT (July of 2018), the length of power transmission lines has increased by 2.3 times, the number of TBAs has increased by 2.5 times, the capacity of transformers has increased by 4.2 times.
Reporter: Currently, what is the biggest difficulty facing EVNNPT, Sir?
Mr. Luu Viet Tien: That is our human resources. Compared with the time of EVNNPT’s establishment, the total number of employees of EVNNPT has increased by 15%, but the number of power production and business employees decreased by 5,28%. The restriction on employing new, young and highly qualified employees with good foreign language competency will lead to the risk of “aging” in the personnel and reducing the capacity to innovate and apply the achievements of science and technology in the field of power transmission. For example, the application of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for line operation management requires workers being capable of controlling UAVs, the application of artificial intelligence (AI) to image analysis, etc.
Reporter: What solution has EVNNPT implemented to overcome these difficulties, Sir?
Mr. Luu Viet Tien: EVNNPT has recruited and organized advanced training courses on protection controlling system (PCS) such as Siemens, ABB, Toshiba for technical staff to take the initiative in renovating, upgrading and expanding PCS of substations, reducing investment costs (compared to the price when hiring outside contractors). EVNNPT has recruited and organized MBA courses and sent staff to participate in the Group’s Expert training project in the fields of grid automation, electrical tests, management of construction investment projects.
Reporter: What solutions can help EVNNPT to continue increasing labour productivity and reducing incidents in the future?
Mr. Luu Viet Tien: To reduce incidents on the transmission grid, EVNNPT is actively and gradually upgrading the transmission grid, reducing incidents due to old equipment; standardize equipment specifications to improve the quality of new equipment; improve the quality of human resources, reduce subjective incidents; apply new achievements of science and technology, proactively forecast potential incidents.
In the coming time, EVNNPT will continue to promote the application of unmanned substations in accordance with EVN’s orientation that by 2020, 60% of 220kV substations will be operated in unmanned mode. At the same time, EVNNPT has gradually applied Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) in line operation management. These will be two breakthrough solutions to help EVNNPT increase the labour productivity.
Reporter: The Corporation has set a target to rank one of the leading companies in Asia in terms of power transmission service quality by 2025. Could you elaborate on this target and future directions for developing smart grid?
Mr. Luu Viet Tien: According to “Development strategy of EVNNPT”, by 2020, EVNNPT will become one of top 4 leading organizations in power transmission in ASEAN. By 2025, EVNNPT will become one of the leading power transmission organizations ranked top 10 countries in Asia. By 2030, EVNNPT will reach the world’s advanced level in the field of power transmission.
According to the power transmission output, EVNNPT is currently in the group of 10 leading power transmission organizations in Asia. As for the scale and capacity of power transmission lines, the capacity of substations and based on 4 criteria in evaluating the quality of the power transmission system (reliability, availability, incident rate and transmission loss in transmission), EVNNPT is approaching this top 10. Thus, the set target by EVNNPT by 2025 is feasible.
EVNNPT is implementing the project “Strengthening Capacity to Access Industrial Revolution 4.0”, including many component projects of smart grid development such as Digital substations, transformer monitoring system, transformer status assessment, dynamic load calculation, insulation aging level, transformers’ life cycle, forecasting and warning of potential risks and incidents, etc.
Reporter: Thank you Sir!