Xinhua News Agency
December 12, 2001

Vietnam’s Yaly hydro-electric power plant construction has just been completed. The last turbine group of the plant went into action on December 12, feeding power to the national grid.

The building of Vietnam’s Yaly hydro-electric power plant has just been completed when the last turbine group of the plant went into action on Wednesday morning, feeding power to the national grid.

The 1,200-ton turbine group, the last of the four turbine groups of the Yaly hydro-electric power plant, has a designed capacity of 180 MW, according to a report of Vietnam News Agency on Wednesday.

With the fourth turbine group of the plant in the country’s central highlands Gia Lai province officially going into action, the Yaly plant will have a total capacity of 720 megawatt (MW), supplying 3.68 billion kilowatt-hour (kWh) of electricity to the national power grid to serve the country’s central and highlands regions.

The first turbine group of the plant generated power on June 23, 2000. So far, the plant’s first three turbine groups have produced more than 3.3 billion kWh of electricity, accounting for 12 percent of the country’s total power output.

The Yaly hydro-electric power plant is the second largest plant in the country after the Hoa Binh hydro-electric power plant on the Da river in northern Hoa Binh province.

According to Electricity of Vietnam, the country needs 40 billion kWh of electricity this year. The figure will increase to between 46 billion and 49 billion kWh in 2005, and between 78 billion and 82 billion kWh in 2010 and 200 billion in 2020.