All villages and hamlets have access to electricity
In mid - 2016, 35 villages and hamlets in Thai Nguyen province did not have access to the national power grid because they situated on mountains and hills where terrain conditions were difficult for transportation and travel. Among them, Ban Ten village with more than 100 H'mong households, mainly poor ones, was one of the most difficult villages in Van Lang commune (Dong Hy district).
Lang Cam village located in the remote area of Phuong Tien commune, Dinh Hoa district, Thai Nguyen province has been electrified since April 2018
In the face of difficult conditions in Ban Ten, Thai Nguyen province, Thai Nguyen Power Company (Thai Nguyen PC) has invested in a project to bring the national power grid to the village. Despite tough mountainous topographical conditions and poor road infrastructure, Thai Nguyen PC has overcome all the obstacles and challenges to construct power lines, install an electric panel and a light bulb for each family and complete the electrification right before the Lunar New Year in 2017.
Not only Ban Ten, nearly 600 households in other villages of Van Lang commune, mostly ethnic minorities, have been electrified since 2017. When the province had a policy to “eradicate” 35 unelectrified villages and hamlets in 18 communes, the Provincial Department of Industry and Trade and Thai Nguyen PC immediately embarked on electrifying these villages. In early 2018 the electrification was completed involving the total investment cost of VND 150.3 billion.
Mr. Dinh Hoang Duong, Director of Thai Nguyen PC said: "These villages and hamlets are located in remote areas, tough terrains, where ethnic minorities reside under very difficult living conditions and dispersed habitats. Therefore, the investment rate for powering a household is about 50 million dong or as high as hundreds of million dong. From business perspective, the power sector will not be able to recover the investment cost. However, what the power sector gains is to supply electricity for remote villages and hamlets in order to ensure social security, create a driving force for economic development, and strengthen security in these areas. "
To date, Thai Nguyen province has become one of the few provinces in the Northern Midlands having the highest percentage of electrified rural households. All villages and hamlets in the province have access to the national power grid. The number of rural households being electrified is 99.75%.
Improvement of power supply quality
Beside the target of “eradicating” the unelectrified villages, in the recent years, Thai Nguyen province and the power sector have focused on improving the quality of electricity supply in rural areas and overcoming “fireflies” situation or unstable power supply.
For example, in Tan Kim mountainous commune of Phu Binh district, since the replacement of low voltage power lines and installation of substations in some areas, the power quality has become better, helping people to stabilize their production activities.
The eradication of unelectrified villages, improvement of power supply quality in rural areas in Thai Nguyen province has well served the needs of local economic development and improvement of people's life, especially of ethnic minorities, creating a driving force for the new rural construction. Up to now, nearly 50% of total communes in Thai Nguyen province have met new rural standards, with the average income of VND 68 million per capita and the rate of poor households down to 9%. All over the province, only 0.25% of households have no access to electricity due to their dispersed residence, especially some households living on high slopes, not having stable residence.
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To overcome this situation, Thai Nguyen province has planned to resettle families who live in remote, isolated areas and having wandering practice to locations near residential areas in order to improve their living conditions, develop local economy and complete the electricity supply for households from the national power grid at the highest rate. Since 2016, Thai Nguyen PC has implemented projects, including: Increasing rural energy efficiency in the Northern mountainous areas, phase 2 (funded by the German Development Bank – KfW 2); Upgrading and rehabilitating rural power grids in remote and isolated areas; Power line and substation overload control projects, etc., with the total investment cost of more than VND 565 billion.
The projects have replaced over 200 km of medium voltage lines, nearly 650 km of low voltage lines and more than 220 substations, improving the power supply quality for 150 villages and hamlets with nearly 31,000 households. Particularly, the power line and substation overload control projects have benefited people in hundreds of communes.
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