A plan to have no feed-in-tariffs at all for rooftop solar projects has been dumped, The Investor is reporting. The draft plan was issued by the Ministry of Industry and Trade and was designed to tackle the issue of over production that surfaced in central Vietnam several years ago.
Said over production, however, was more the result of projects being approved outside of the plans and policies that were in place for solar power development. Specifically, the Government Inspectorate found that the Power Development Plan 7, approved in 2016, had set out to see 850 MW of solar power by 2020, however, a total of 168 solar projects with a total capacity of 14,707 MW were approved.
This was also in parts of the country where there was not sufficient infrastructure to move the electricity generated to where it was needed. As a result, a lot of power generators have been asked to curtail their power output at various times.
In this context, the move to offer no feed-in-tariffs looks to be more of an obfuscation of responsibility rather than to seriously help maintain a steady and consistent power supply.
See also: Electricity in Vietnam: Foreign Investor Cheat Sheet 2024