100MW Offshore Wind Plant Launched in Vietnam Amid RE Push

Vietnam ‘s leading renewables firm Trung Nam Group has launched its first offshore wind farm amid the Southeast Asian country’s drive for clean energy, the company said on Monday.

The 5 trillion dong ($220.17 million as $1 = 22,710 dong) farm in the southern province of Tra Vinh has 25 turbines with installed capacity of 100 megawatts, the company said in a statement. The construction of the plant was commenced in the fourth quarter of 2020.

Trung Nam said it would raise the total capacity of its renewable power plants to 3.8 gigawatts (GW) and LNG-to-power plants to 1.5 GW by 2025. The project is reported to be the largest offshore scale wind power project in Tra Vinh province.

According to media reports, General Director of Trung Nam Group Nguyen Tam Tien believes that the plant is considered Trung Nam’s first step in the journey to cross the sea, demonstrating the group’s construction capacity, in implementing an offshore wind power project.

He noted that the group has overcome the test of time and unfavourable natural conditions in the Southwest region to fulfil the project, paving the way for the construction of more offshore wind power projects in the future, said media reports.

During the ten-month construction, Trung Nam reportedly transported nearly 70,000 tonnes of equipment, over a distance of over 12,000km, to gather at the construction site engineers and used more than 1,100 engineers and workers to directly implement the project.

Addressing the inauguration, Chairman of the People’s Committee of Tra Vinh province Le Van Han reportedly said that with a total capacity of 100 MW, the plant will provide about 330 million KWh of electricity per year to the national grid, contributing to demonstrate energy security in the Mekong Delta region and promote the socio-economic development of Tra Vinh province.

The Southeast Asian country of Vietnam, in which over 98 million people reside, is said to have made economic progress in recent years. The country has been shifting to a market economy, and along with growing industrialisation and economic modernisation, the demand for electrical energy is increasing.

Aiming to reach carbon emission neutrality by 2050, the Vietnamese government has taken part in discussions with various private sector groups and energy organizations as part of a step-by-step approach to finalise the country’s latest Power Development Plan, which focusses on renewables. The country has said it aimed to double its installed wind and solar power generation capacity to 31-38 GW by 2030.