In January, the power supply in the whole system still faced many difficulties because the water levels in almost all reservoirs could hardly reach the normal level, of which the water level of Hoa Binh lake was 113 m, a 3 m year-on-year decrease. However, for the reason that offices and factories had days off throughout the Lunar New Year, the capacity provision of the system was up to 30%.
On February 12 which was the first day when enterprises operated as usual, the capacity in rush hour in the morning (from 10h30 to 11h30) was just 8,500 MW while the available capacity of the system was 11,300 MW. As revealed by the National Power System Moderation Center (Ao), in previous years, additional load did not saw an upsurge after the Tet holidays, thus in February The Electricity of Vietnam (EVN) will supply a concrete guidance not to retrench the power demand but in case of emergency.
In order to ensure the provision of power for this dry season, EVN is repairing some units as planned. Accordingly, one unit (300 MW) of Pha Lai Thermal Power Company will be extracted form the whole system and repaired from February 12 to February 16, one unit (240 MW) of Hoa Binh Hydropower Company will be separated from the maintenance network from February 13 to March 28, and one unit (100 MW) of Tri An Hydropower Company will be extracted from repairing network from February 13 to March 28. Therefore, the available capacity of the system will reduce to about 10,800 MW. So as to compensate the lacked capacity, EVN decided to generate oil-fired generations.
Also unveiled by EVN, up to now, after two periods of water discharging for Winter-Spring crop in 2008, the water level in Hoa Binh and Thac Ba lakes still guarantees the water supply for this dry season despite of the lower water level compared to that in 2007.
From news of Irrigation Regulatory Authority (Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development), after two water discharging periods, the area for storing water has reached 77%.
Thanh Mai