Energy conservation and energy efficiency programs
In the early years of the 21st century, Vietnam had been facing the danger of energy shortage due to the increase in global oil price, the decline of hydropower resources due to adverse weather conditions, as well as inefficient exploitation and use of primary energy resources of the country. In that context, the National Target Program on Energy Efficiency for the period 2006 - 2010 (VNEEP) had been developed to promote economical and efficient use of the limited energy resources of the country, which aimed to reduce the total energy consumption by 3 - 5%.
In 2012, phase II of VNEEP was approved in the context associated with Green Growth and sustainable development targets. Phase II sets the overall target of a 5 - 8% reduction in total commercial energy consumption along with targets of energy consumption reduction in some industrial products.
Regarding the implementation results, according to a summary of the Ministry of Industry and Trade on VNEEP, the cumulative commercial energy savings in the whole period 2006 - 2010 reached 3,733 KTOE, equivalent to 3.4% of the total final energy consumption. During the period 2011 - 2015, the cumulative energy savings was 10,610 KTOE, equivalent to 5.65% of the total final energy consumption for the whole period. In addition, VNEEP 2 achieved the target of reducing the average energy consumption of some products and achieved some success in energy conservation in economic sub-sectors.
Demand Side Management Program (DSM)
Demand Side Management, or DSM, has been studied and piloted in Vietnam since the 2000s. The national DSM program has been officially implemented in the period of 2007 - 2015 according to Decision No. 2447/QD-BCN dated 17 July 2007 of the Minister of Industry (now the Ministry of Industry and Trade).
DSM programs in this period contributed to ensuring the balance of supply and demand, gradually improving the quality of power supply, the reliability of power supply, increasing the efficiency of electricity use of customers and the whole power system, influencing the perception of electricity consumers in using electricity economically and efficiently.
Up to now, a number of DSM programs and projects are still being implemented annually by Vietnam Electricity.
Among which, the Time-Of-Use (or simply called TOU) Meter Program has been realized since the early 2000s. This program is applied to set electricity tariffs based on the time of use by customers, thereby affecting the electricity usage behavior of customers. In terms of the system, TOU is the main factor contributing to reducing the load difference between peak and off-peak hours, thereby improving the load curve of the power system.
With the increasing number of TOU customers from 84,815 in 2009 to 264,493 in 2015, by the end of 2019 the number of TOU customers was 523,222 (accounting for 22.5% of total customers). Looking at the parameters of the power system, it shows that the TOU Program has had positive effects by increasingly flattening the load curve, whereby the load factor of the national power system was improved from 0.781 in 2015 to nearly 0.784 in 2019, the Pmin/Pmax coefficient increased from 0.52 in 2015 to 0.54 in 2019.
In 2014, EVN carried out a pilot project to replace incandescent light bulbs with energy-saving light bulbs for dragon fruit farms in Binh Thuan, Long An and Tien Giang provinces.
In this program, 2 million 20W compact light bulbs (CFLs) with a lifespan of 6,000 hours were used to replace the incandescent lamps currently used in the farms.
The program to promote the use of compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) in replace of incandescent bulbs has been performed by EVN since 2005 through various stages. According to market data, the program has contributed to the rapid development of the CFL market, with a growth rate of 267% in 2006. The average growth rate for the whole period 2005 - 2010 was 87%/year.
The efficiency assessment shows that the amount of electricity savings(calculated to the end of the 6,000h lifetime of 127 million CFLs) is 34.29 billion kWh and households will save more than VND 51.43 trillion. The estimated emission reduction is 19.9 million tons of CO2. In addition, the program has resulted in an effective reduction of 1,714.5MW of peak capacity.