By Nguyen Dang Anh Thi   April 1, 2021 | 07:50 am GMT+7 vnexpress

Vietnam needs to learn the right lessons from Germany’s experience – going from protests against renewable energy to becoming one of the top five nations in clean power.

Nguyen Dang Anh Thi

I choose to talk about Germany because most of the feed-in-tariff policies for Vietnam’s renewable energy have been designed using the German model and built with consultation from the Deutshe Gesellschaftür Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) or German Corporation for International Cooperation, an agency that provides services in the field of international development cooperation.

30 years ago, Germany issued the FIT policy for the first time to boost the selling of renewable electricity to the national grid. In the beginning, when the proportion of wind and solar power output made up just less than 0.1 percent of the nation’s total, there were already worries about renewable energy threatening safety and stability of the national power grid.

Back then, a group of power companies in Germany had released a joint statement creating pressure on the government, saying that renewable energy from solar, wind and hydropower plants should not exceed 4 percent of the total power output, even in the long run.

For decades, many entities in Germany had advocated thermal and nuclear power, and kept calling for delays in expanding the national power grid and delivering cautions on clean energy.

But the people of Germany had said yes big time to clean energy. Their voice, luckily, had been heard, and the government had listened to them with a long-time view, adopting consistent policies with transparency and integrity.

Vietnamnet 16/03/2021    09:05 GMT+7

Low power demand coupled with oversupply of electricity at times have forced authorities to cut the capacity of renewable energy plants in order to avoid overwhelming the national grid, according to the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT).

Low power demand coupled with oversupply of electricity at times have forced authorities to cut the capacity of renewable energy plants. (Photo: VNA)

A large amount of investments from social resources has been poured into developing renewable energy, particularly solar energy, over previous years in Vietnam, according to the ministry.

However, a boom in high-capacity renewable energy projects, mainly in central and southern Vietnam, has overloaded inter-regional transmission lines and caused oversupply at times, the ministry said in Document No 1226/BCT-DTDL sent to the National Assembly’s committees for Science, Technology and Environment, and Economic Affairs and the Office of the Government explaining its stance on the power capacity cut.

Additionally, domestic demand for power has fallen below normal levels due to the impact of COVID-19, which led to an oversupply of electricity during off-peak times such as holidays, weekends, and at noon, the ministry said.

According to the ministry, this is a very dangerous situation that adversely affects the safe operation of the national grid. Though the National Load Dispatch Centre (A0) has reduced the output of traditional energy to the minimum, the oversupply remains, so the centre had to make another cut to renewable energy capacity to prevent the electricity system from collapsing.

The ministry has ordered Vietnam Electricity (EVN) and A0 to calculate the required reduction of capacity at all renewable power plants in a transparent and fair manner, regardless of who their investors are.

The ministry added that it has received government approval onthe supplement of various power transmission line projects into planning while urging EVN to fast-track the progress of existing projects to raise the capacity of the national electricity network./. VNA

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