Representatives from across the power industry will chart out Vietnam’s clean energy future at a seminar on “Renewable energy integration: challenges and technologies”.
As one of the fastest growing economies in the region, Vietnam is experiencing rapid industrialization, and as the country’s growing middle class moves to towards cities, vast urbanization is taking place. To support this development sustainably, the country is moving from the currently predominant fossil fuel based energy to embrace renewable energy. As the industry prepares for this transition, the Electricity and Renewable Energy Authority under Vietnam Ministry of Industry and Trade (MOIT) and ABB in Vietnam will co-host a seminar on “Renewable energy integration: challenges and technologies”.
This event on September 7th at Hanoi, will bring together a cross-section of Vietnam’s Renewable Energy ecosystem including MOIT, the Electricity and Renewable Energy Department, the national power utility Electricity of Vietnam (EVN), consultants, and developers, in the light of Vietnam’s ambition to increase the generation and consumption of Renewable energy, as well as explore the challenges in achieving these goals, and how technology can help to resolve them.
The event will explore successful applications of power technologies such as digital substations, microgrids and battery energy storage, and demonstrate how digitalization is essential for the grid to be flexible and adapt to the intermittent nature of renewables. Technology deployment examples from ABB will also include grid automation solutions such as SCADA, Network Manager and asset management software.
“As the country moves towards clean energy, the power grid will need to adapt to the influx of renewable energy, which is intermittent and also characterized by distributed generation. Not only does this call for wider industry collaboration and policy discussions, it is also important to make the right technology choices. Technology will enable to grid to be flexible, and to adapt to the new realities of distributed generation and multi-directional power flow. Digitalization is key to create the power grid of the future.” said Venu Nuguri, Group Senior Vice President for ABB’s Power Grids Division in South Asia, Middle East and Africa.
According to Vietnam’s Master Power Development Plan VII (PDP-7), the demand for electricity consumption in Vietnam will increase by about 10 - 11% annually, which exceeds the annual GDP growth rate. However, fossil fuel and coal account for more than half the country’s power in 2017, according to EVN annual report.
The Power Development Plan (PDP) outlines active steps that Vietnam is taking to develop renewable energy sources that will account for 10% of the country’s power generation by 2030 (12 GW). The PDP also outlines the need to invest in a power transmission grid with flexible operation and high automation capabilities from electricity transmission to distribution; activities such as developing unmanned substations and substations etc. In addition, the plan also highlights the need to accelerate electrification in rural and mountainous areas to ensure access to electricity to households by 2020.
