page_title: Renewable energy in Vietnam
section_title: Solar energy
hierarchical_section_title: Renewable energy in Vietnam / Solar energy
caption_attribution_description: English: The solar array atop the Vietnam Assembly and Test Factory in Ho Chi Minh City is the biggest operating solar facility in Vietnam. Intel Free Press story: Intel Goes Solar in Vietnam. Vietnam's largest solar facility joins Israel installation as second Intel solar array outside U.S.
context_page_description: Vietnam exploits all four big sources of renewable energy: hydroelectricity, wind power, solar power and biomass. The potential for hydroelectricity is well developed. By the end of 2018, hydropower was the largest source of renewable energy, contributing about 40% to the total national electricity capacity.
  Excluding medium and large-sized hydropower plants, other renewable energy sources accounted for 2.1% of the total capacity of the whole system in mid-2019, but that number is increasing fast. While only two utility-scale solar PV plants were operating at the end of 2018, a feed-in tariff policy deadline led eighty new plants to be connected by 2019. Solar power generation capacity, over 4460 MW, represents now more than 8% of total generation system capacity. While by the end of 2018 the total installed wind power capacity in Vietnam reached about 228 MW, the number of projects under construction implied that this number would more than double in 2019. Wind and solar have a combined share of 10% of the country's electrical generation at the start of 2020, already meeting the government's 2030 goal, suggesting future displacement of growth of coal capacity.
context_section_description: Vietnam has a great potential to develop solar power, especially in the central and south regions.
  The average number of sunshine hours in the North ranges from 1,500-1,700 hours of sunshine per year. Meanwhile, the Central and Southern regions have higher average annual sunshine hours, from 2,000-2,600 hours/year.
  The average daily solar radiation intensity in the north is 3.69 kWh/m2 and the south is 5.9 kWh/m2. The amount of solar radiation depends on the amount of cloud and the atmosphere of each locality. From one region to another, there is significant variation in solar radiation. Radiation intensity in the South is often higher than in the North.
  Table 2 : Solar radiation in Vietnam: 
  According to the prime minister's 2016 energy plan, solar power was expected to reach 850 MW (0.5%) by 2020, about 4,000 MW (1.6%) in 2025 and about 12,000 MW (3.3%) by 2030.
  In the first half of 2018, the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MOIT) recorded 272 solar power plant projects in planning with a total capacity of about 17,500 MW, 9 times higher than Hoa Binh hydropower plants and 7 times more than Son La hydropower plant. By the end of 2018, there were about 10,000 MW registered, of which 8100 MW was newly added to the plan, more than 100 projects signed power purchase agreements, and two projects came into operation with a total capacity of about 86 MW.
  By the end of June 30, 2019, 82 solar power plants, with a total capacity of about 4,464 MW, were approved and commissioned by the National Electricity Regulatory Center. These projects were entitled to an electricity purchase price (FIT) equivalent to 9.35 US¢/kWh for a period of 20 years under Decision 11/2017/QD-TTg  of the Prime Minister. At that time, solar power accounted for 8.28% of the installed capacity of Vietnam's electricity system. Through the end of 2019, the Center was expected to put into operation 13 more solar power plants, with a total capacity of 630 MW, bringing the total number of solar power plants in the whole system to 95. The actual installed capacity at the end of 2019 reached almost 5 GW.
  A few large-scale solar power projects have been built in Vietnam:
  In April 2019, 3 clusters of solar power plants of BIM Group (capacity of 330 MWP) in Ninh Thuan completed commission electricity to the national grid system, including BIM 1 power plant with capacity of 30 Mwp; BIM 2 with capacity of 250 Mwp and BIM 3 with capacity of 50 Mwp. The cluster of 3 solar power plants was invested more than 7,000 billion VND, installing more than 1 million solar panels.
  On November 4, 2018, after 9 months of construction, TTC Krong Pa solar power plant with a capacity of 49 MW (69 MWp), the total investment of more than VND 1,400 billion, built in Gia Lai province, has commissioned successfully.
  On September 25, 2018, Phong Dien Solar Power Plant in Thua Thien Hue province completed commission electricity to the national grid system. This is the first 35 MW solar power plant to be commissioned in Vietnam. It is expected that by 2019, this factory will expand more with the capacity of 29.5 MW with an area of 38.5 hectares, meeting a part of the demand for electricity consumption in the future.
  Tra O lagoon solar power plant project (My Loi commune, Phu My district, Binh Dinh province), with a capacity of 50MWp, was expected to deploy on a water surface area of around 60 hectares of the lagoon's 1,300 hectares in quarter II 2019. However, from mid-2018, during the implementation process, there was fierce opposition from the local people, preventing investors from building projects due to some big concerns about affecting the ecological environment causing death of fish and shrimp under the lagoon (because this is the main income source for the communes surrounding the lagoon) and the water source pollution problem.
  Hacom Solar solar power plant project (Phuoc Minh commune, Thuan Nam district, Ninh Thuan province), 50 MWp capacity, was started in April 2019. However, when constructing the factory, the investor (Hacom Solar Energy Co., Ltd) arbitrarily let the vehicles run t
caption: Intel Solar Installation Vietnam
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