Mr. Paul English
Reporter: The Prime Minister has created favorable conditions for investors by determining the price of solar power at 9.35 UScent/kWh. Do you think that there will be an investment "wave" in solar power in Vietnam?
Paul English: Vietnam is one of the countries with the largest amount of radiation in the world's solar radiation map. Vietnam also owns a developed power network infrastructure. However, the low purchase price, which is not favorable to investors, is a barrier to developing this renewable energy source in this country.
The promulgation of solar power purchase price by the Government has officially removed the congestion for the electricity market in Vietnam. The issuance of Decision No. 11/2017/QD-TTg by the Government is essential, contributing to promoting the development of solar power to meet rapidly increasing demand on energy in Vietnam.
With the application of technology and the strategic change, satisfying the increasingly high demands of customers for output, stability in power as well as clean energy sources, security in environmental sustainability, investors and providers in solar power equipment have been ready to grasp the opportunity to “boom” in the solar energy market in the coming time.
Reporter: In accordance with the Prime Minister’s Decision No. 11/2017/QD-TTg, solar power plants shall complete construction and grid connection by June 2019 to be entitled to the unit price of 9.35 UScent/kWh. How does equipment and technology influence the feasibility of solar power projects in your point of view?
Paul English: The technology used in grid-connected solar power projects has taken leaps in recent years. The efficiency of materials and photovoltaic cells of solar battery has been improved, the performance, efficiency and voltage rating of the inverters have been increased, the energy balance component has been optimized and grid connection has been more stable.
These improvements have a great efficiency on investment capital and operating management costs throughout the project life cycle. This cost has been decreased by 85% over the period from 2009 to 2016 thanks to technological advances.
Reporter: How does GE technology favorably support the process of accessing and approving solar power projects?
Paul English: GE is the first unit to introduce 1.5kV technology based on the experience of providing inverters with the total installed capacity of more than 4MW globally. This technology helps solar power plants to be more simplified in design, more effectively operate and reduce the necessary investment cost in infrastructure structure. GE's inverters can reduce the power system costs by 3% and save operating costs by 15% in comparison with the 1kV technology, thereby making the solar project more competitive and profitable.
GE has invested in several renewable energy projects globally with installed capacity of 10GW. GE's Energy financial services department enables the company to play the role as an investor when participating in taking the project ownership as a small shareholder.
This dual business model ensures that customers can take control rights over projects, access to GE's financial capabilities to increase the possibility to borrow bank loans for the projects. This means more solar projects will be implemented, giving partners and investors opportunities to access to GE's technical knowledge sources throughout the project’s implementation stages.
This is a great advantage for GE's partners as we determined that our development strategy is to become the leading unit in The Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) and the IoT trend.
Reporter: Owning a product portfolio with diversified solar energy solutions and equipment in many countries around the world, which commitments have made by GE to promote the development of solar power market in Vietnam, sir?
Paul English: In many respects, we find it a right time to consolidate GE's position in Vietnam. With the current development trend, the Solar energy industry promises a bright prospect, investors will benefit once GE actively participates in projects of installation and application of hardware and software solutions in the field of Solar power.
GE also has actively established partnership with local construction engineers, experts and contractors, at the same time GE will transfer technology knowhow and financial capability to the region.
GE's technology transferring initiative is a solution package of solar energy including many important technologies such as solar panels, 1.5kV inverters, substations, advanced battery storage system and digital software, etc. This package is developed to increase the efficiency of the solar energy project not only in hardware specifications but also in being digitized with the monitoring capacity to the entire system.
A crucial difference of this package is that GE will integrate all of key technologies above-mentioned into an optimized system. As a result, customers can operate the system in a less complex and less risky manner. Also, the reliability and availability of the system can be increased.
Reporter: Thank you very much, Sir!