▪ LE CAM LE07:10 (GMT+7) - Friday, May 16, 2008
Power shortages are very real in Vietnam and the government, businesses and individuals alike must all begin to look at and reduce their electricity use
Power shortages are very real in Vietnam and the government, businesses and individuals alike must all begin to look at and reduce their electricity use.
“How much was your electricity bill last month, both at home and at work?” “What appliances contributed the most to your electricity bill and how much did they contribute?” “How long did these appliances run for when not needed?”
According to one energy expert, if you can’t answer each of these questions accurately then there’s a good chance you are not using electricity as efficiently as you could be. In Vietnam, where power efficiency has become a major concern amid serious power shortages, it’s almost like saying you don’t care about the common benefit to the community.
As Vietnam continues to develop it consumes electricity in larger and larger quantities. In 2008 Electricity of Vietnam (EVN) estimates it will produce and buy 77.2 billion kWh, an increase of 15.62 per cent over 2007. EVN recently announced that in 2008 it cannot satisfy the demand in peak hours and will therefore have to impose limits of 600-1,000 MW from 9am to 11am and 1,400 -1,600 MW from 5pm to 7pm.
The government and EVN have therefore called for power savings. A range of solutions have already been adopted but results were less than expected as the most important factor, awareness by consumers, has not changed quickly enough as their demand increases.
State offices are normally the first to be mentioned regarding waste of energy. Last year management offices in Hanoi were named as being among the biggest wasters because their office lighting stays on around the clock.
In Decree 80/2006/QD- TTg of 2006, the government requires its offices to reduce their annual electricity costs by at least 10 per cent. But turning off unnecessary equipment when leaving the office and completely disconnecting power supplies are yet to become common practices. Air conditioners, one of the biggest power users in office buildings, are still used when the weather is actually quite pleasant. “Power bills are paid from the State budget, not from staff’s pockets, so they waste it,” said Mr Duong Quoc Tuan, Head of the Propaganda Department under the Hanoi Power Company. “They should try harder to lessen the burden on the State budget.”
There is a difference between using electricity at home and in offices, as at home people must pay the bills. But this does not mean that they know how to use electricity effectively. This year EVN hopes to save 339.3 million kWh, or 1.34 per cent of electricity consumption for households’ daily activities.
Industrial production, meanwhile, consumes around 40 per cent of available power. The Energy Efficiency and Conservation Office under the Ministry of Industry and Trade reported that energy intensity in Vietnam is much higher than in other regional countries. The figures for Vietnam’s industry is 1.5-1.7 times higher than in Thailand and Malaysia, which means to produce the same products producers in Vietnam will consume much higher amounts of energy. Experts calculate that to earn $1 of GDP in Vietnam, 1.02 kWh are used compared to 0.19 – 0.512 kWh in other countries in the region.
“Enterprises still waste electricity because of their outdated technology,” said Mr Phuong Hoang Kim, an expert at the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Office. He blames a lack of capital and information regarding technology, as well as consultants on technological innovation. “They pay more attention to expanding production than to investing in energy saving,” he said. The energy auditing program of his office, applied at over 100 enterprises, shows that they are mostly interested in energy saving solutions that require low investment. “They prefer just to think about solutions requiring huge investment,” said Mr Kim.
Wasted energy is considered a major concern for poor countries, but “it’s not only poor countries that waste energy; rich ones do too,” said Mr Richard Spencer, Energy Sector Coordinator at the World Bank in Vietnam, and part of the reason, he believes, is that electrical machinery of older design tends to be less efficient, and the less efficient machines tend to be cheaper, precisely because they are older designs.
There is insufficient knowledge in poorer countries about what is available in the world, or about the efficiencies of different machines. For example, in many of the richer countries household appliances must be labelled to show how much energy they use and how much it will cost to run the appliance for a year. “Vietnam doesn’t yet have a labelling scheme, though one is now under preparation,” said Mr Spencer. “For companies the same problem applies, but because their investments tend to be more complex it is not so easily solved. For firms in poorer countries, getting expert help to compare different equipment, production processes or technologies can be difficult.”
“The waste of electricity in industrial production sector directly affects prices and it is here that the potential for savings is most obvious,” said Mr Hoa Thai Thanh, Head of the Applied Technology Department under the Hanoi Energy Conservation Centre. The centre estimates that enterprises can save up to 15- 20 per cent of their electricity consumption if they applied appropriate solutions.
EVN has targeted that this year the industry and construction sector, which consumed 50.2 per cent of its electricity supply in 2007, will save 180.4 million kWh, equivalent to 0.62 per cent of total consumption. Electricity is not a product for which the rule of “we can use as much as we like because we pay for it,” commonly adopted by the well-off, can be applied. People can blame EVN for the shortages, but they are also part of the problem.
Data from the World Bank shows that Vietnam still consumes relatively small amounts of electricity - about 650 kilowatt hours (kWh) per person per year, compared with an average of 1,343kWh/year in East Asia and 1,225 kWh/year for all middle income countries. “Almost all countries’ electricity consumption increases with growth in GDP, but Vietnam is unusual in that for every one percentage point of growth in GDP power demand increases by about two per cent, which is a rather higher ratio than in many other countries,” said Mr Spencer, “So when we talk about the potential to save power what we really mean is the potential to reduce the rate of growth in demand.”
Many countries have found that, with the right effort, it is possible to save up to 20 per cent of electricity consumption without affecting output and the key is to ensure that the incentives are in place so that companies, households and individuals all want to save electricity and that programs are in place to help them understand how to go about it.
“People say that Hoan Kiem Lake should be lit up at night because it is the centre of Vietnam’s capital,” said an officer from the Hanoi Power Company. “True or not, such a view belongs to a different time when power supply always met demand.” EVN has been assigned to intensify the implementation of programs to reduce power losses, to 9 per cent by 2010. Meanwhile, Mr Do Huu Hao, Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade, has been quoted as saying that the country will be short of electricity until 2020.