Excess rooftop solar will be permitted to be sold to Vietnam’s state power provider Electricity Vietnam or EVN to a maximum of 20 percent of the installation’s capacity, according to Decree 135 issued Tuesday. Feed-in-tariffs will be set at the average market electricity price of the previous year, VN Express is reporting.
Originally the Ministry of Industry and Trade had been pushing for no feed-in tariffs on rooftop solar, however, at the request of the government, it reluctantly agreed to have feed-in tariffs but limited to just ten percent of the installation’s capacity.
This was then raised to 20 percent at the request of Vietnam’s Deputy Prime Minister Tran Hong Ha.
Of note, the Ministry’s trepidation stems from a policy introduced, in 2017, to encourage renewable energy, in which 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.
It was however, put on ice in late 2020 due to concerns about uncontrolled growth of rooftop solar power sources with cracks appearing in the national power grid. As a result, since the beginning of 2021, the signing of rooftop solar power purchase and sale contracts has been halted.
See also: Vietnam’s Solar Power Industry: Overview