GE Energy will join projects developing wind power and supply equipment for projects in the industry, said Nguyen Xuan Thang, country executive of GE Energy Vietnam.
Thang said Vietnam’s coastal areas, including the central provinces of Ninh Thuan and Binh Thuan, and the Mekong Delta provinces, were considered to have the best wind source in the Southeast Asian countries to develop wind mills.
The biggest problem is the low buying price, Thang noted. There are many developers complaining that the current price has yet to ensure the operation of wind power plants, he added.
Decision 37/2011/QD-TTg issued on June 29 by the Government sets the buying price of wind power at 7.8 cents per kilowatt and allows for an extraction of 1 cent per kilowatt from the Vietnam Environment Protection Fund to support producers. But most investors said this price failed to guarantee profitability for the wind power mills since the input cost was between 10 to 12 cents per kilowatt.
Nonetheless, Thang said, these difficulties could not prevent the already licensed projects from being implemented. According to him, investors are still able to carry out their projects provided that they have good investment plans, such as advanced technology, strong wind sources and preferential loans.
It is expected the current price policy would help minimize a massive investment in the wind power sector and make the deployment progress of licensed ones slower. The reason is that developers are expecting a subsidy policy from the Government so that they could make profits, while only wind electric schemes are feasible, contributing considerable output to the whole nation’s power output.
So far, a number of developers that obtained licenses in Vietnam have kept working with GE, Thang said. GE, for instance, had signed deals with Cong Ly Trading and Tourism Co., to provide ten sets of wind power turbines, ranging from 1.6 to 82.5, and support operation as well as providing maintenance services for the initial phase of the Bac Lieu project with a total capacity of 16MW.
In the next phase, the company will continue to increase the capacity up to 120MW, which will help ease the situation of regular power shortage in the area. Besides, the project is scheduled to be connected with the national grid in the first quarter of 2012, as the second biggest power plant in Vietnam to be exploited.
