Vietnam’s Deputy Prime Minister Tran Hong Ha has asked the Ministry of Industry and Trade to look at increasing the volume of excess rooftop solar that the state power provider will buy from private installations to 20 percent, VN Express is reporting. This is up for 10 percent outlined in the current draft decree.
Of note, originally the Ministry had been pushing for no feed-in tariffs on rooftop solar. It had then, at the request of the government, reluctantly agreed to have feed-in tariffs–paid at about 2.6 cents per kilowatt-hour–but limited to just ten percent of the installation’s capacity. This is off the back of past rooftop solar policies causing broad challenges for Vietnam’s electricity sector.
More specifically, in 2017, to encourage renewable energy, the government implemented a mechanism to buy excess rooftop solar power at a preferential feed-in tariff price of 9.35 cents per kilowatt hour. This policy led to a significant increase in investments in rooftop solar power systems.
This policy, however, ended in late 2020 due to concerns about uncontrolled growth of rooftop solar power sources. This rapid expansion caused challenges in managing the national power grid and since the beginning of 2021, the signing of rooftop solar power purchase and sale contracts has been halted.
See also: Electricity in Vietnam: Foreign Investor Cheat Sheet 2024