Overall, 106 projects totalling 5.6GW of wind capacity were in construction for a planned feed-in-tariff (FIT) of 0.098USD (€0.09) for offshore and 0.085USD for onshore wind.
Vietnam FIT
Vietnam will stick to its plan to end its offer of a fixed wind power feed-in tariff (FiT) in November, the government said on Thursday, despite calls from developers to extend it due to coronavirus-induced delays on their projects.
The Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC) and the global wind industry is calling on the Vietnamese government to postpone the feed-in tariff (FiT) deadline for wind projects by at least six months as a Covid-19 relief measure.
Hung said a draft decision is being worked upon that would replace the previous payment mechanism with two separate tariffs set at different rates, one for solar to be consumed on site and another payment for power exported to Vietnam’s grid. The self-consumption payment would be for between 70 – 90% of power generated by projects, with the remaining 10 – 30% allocated for export payments.
Vietnam has recently seen a remarkable solar photovoltaic (PV) boom, the first stage of a major and rapid energy transition in the country. The country’s solar PV capacity increased from only 86 MW in 2018 to 4,750 MW in 2019.
Vietnam has just witnessed a veritable solar tsunami, with installations jumping from about 400MW in 2019 to 9.500MW by the end of 2020. This is unprecedented for the rooftop solar PV market in any market I can think of – other markets like Japan, China, and Germany have each seen annual deployment levels between 7-15GW, but significant shares were made up of large ground-mounted systems.
The key matter here is the Prime Minister’s support for extending the feed-in-tariff (FiT) for wind projects beyond next year. The current FiT rate of 8.5 UScent/kWh (onshore) and 9.8 UScent/kWh (offshore) applies to projects with commercial operations dates before 1st November 2021, and these are expected to be extended until 31st December 2023. After 2023, an auction system is likely to be introduced, similar to that being considered for solar power in Vietnam.
Hanoi has set new feed-in tariff rates for utility-scale, rooftop and floating PV projects, ending a long period of policy uncertainty. The government has announced the new rates, which are broadly in line with industry expectations, roughly 10 months after the expiration of its old tariffs.
For combined heat and power (“CHP”) biomass power projects: 7.03 US cent per kWh (exclusive of VAT) (increased from 5.8 US cent per kWh under the previous Decision No. 24 and from 6.77 US cent per kWh under the previous draft during November 2019); and for other biomass energy projects: 8.47 US cent per kWh (exclusive of VAT) (instead of the avoided cost tariff under the current Decision No. 24).
Vietnam’s Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT) sent a report to the government on Tuesday in which it recommends maintaining feed-in tariffs for large-scale PV projects, rather than switching to auctions, according to law firm Lexcomm Vietnam.
