Lacking power was the regular statement made by EVN, while cutting power was the regular thing made by the power group.

Vietnam has been seriously lacking electricity since 2006. Power cuts were regularly made in many localities, especially in the dry and hot seasons, which caused big difficulties to people’s daily activities and big losses to the national economy.

Investments up, but power still lacking

In the years from 2007 to 2010, people felt worried every year, when the dry season came. Power cuts occurred right at the beginning of every dry season.

In the 2007’s dry season, from January 1 to May 31, 2007, Vietnam needed more than 28 billion KWh of electricity, but EVN could provide 27 billion KWh.

The electricity shortage became even more serious in the dry season of 2008. According to EVN, the needed daily average power output was 192 million KWh and the capacity of 11,200MW at peak hours. Meanwhile, the usable capacity was only 9600-9800MW.

In 2009, the northern provinces of Vietnam were only allowed to consume 48 million KWh per day, or it lacked 5-8 million KWh per day. In May and June, in the hot summer, the electricity provided to the north only met 70-80 percent of the demand, i.e. it lacked 9-10 million KWh per day.

In 2010, EVN promised that the rotating power cuts would only begin from early May. However, in fact, it began cutting power right at the beginning of March.

In the 27 provinces and cities in the north, except Hanoi, the electricity shortage reached 9-12 percent, or about 222-326 million KWh a month in the dry season, which was higher than the 3.2 percent shortage of the whole national power system. 

In the period, EVN only allocated 13,378 billion KWh of electricity it got from power generation sources, including from small hydropower plants to the Northern Electricity Corporation, only meeting 12.75 percent of the demand for growth in comparison with 2010.

In 2011, the serious electricity shortage was eased, just because of the economic difficulties, which led to the production scaling down, the profuse water supply for water reservoirs and the cool summer, which helped the demand for additional charge increase by less than 10 percent.

However, in early March, the power shortage occurred in many localities which then witnessed rotating power cuts.

Power cuts became oblivion

The regular power cuts caused big difficulties to people and big damages to the national economy. In 2007, Dak Lak province needed 1.8 million KWh a day, but the Dak Lak power company was told to provide 1.1 million KWh a day only. In the dry season, local residents saw the power cuts from 4 am to 10 pm in every two days.

At offices, workers had nothing to do except sitting and chatting until the office hours finished. The students’ study was seriously affected because of the lack of light, the inability to access Internet. A lot of traffic accident cases occurred on the streets in Buon Ma Thuot City because of the lack of electricity for the lighting system. 

In 2007-2010, residents in rural areas could not watch TV news in the evenings for months long. As the power was only provided at midnight, they had to do everything at midnight, from pumping water to cooking for the next day.

Enterprises complained that they lost billions of dong just because of the electricity cuts. In March 2011, the power cuts occurred in some industrial zones in Bac Ninh province. Some foreign invested enterprises in the Que Vo industrial zone complained that they saw the power cut six times within 28 hours.

Shim Wonhwan, General Director of Samsung Electronics Vietnam in Yen Phong industrial zone, even sent a letter to Deputy Prime Minister Hoang Trung Hai to ask for help, because the power cuts made the production stagnant and caused big losses. The sudden power cuts caused a lot of troubles to the machines, and that badly affected the quality of products.

Meanwhile, steel mills complained that the losses caused by the power cuts may reach trillions of dong every year.

Source: VNN