Vietnam News Agency
June 5, 2005

Drought in Vietnam generates criticism of the country’s electricity monopoly and its over-reliance on large hydro dams. Blackouts and the water level of the Hoa Binh Reservoir have been hot topics over the last two weeks, resulting in a new phrase, the Hoa Binh Reservoir effect, which could well be added to the Vietnamese slang glossary.

The phrase embodies the widespread blackouts in northern Viet Nam. Long
droughts in the north have dropped the water level in the Hoa Binh Reservoir to the lowest level since 1998. The reservoir, on which the country’s largest hydropower plant operates, was at a record low of 78.03m on May 28, 1.97m below the dead storage level. Insufficient
water has reduced the plant’s electricity production, thereby causing severe power shortages in 22 cities and provinces in the north.

Although the Hoa Binh hydropower plant is designed to operate at least one turbine when the water falls to 75m, which has happened four times since it was opened in 1988, under such a state, safety and sustainability cannot be guaranteed.

Cutting power occasionally in the northern region, apparently the best solution to save energy and reduce production pressure on the power plant, was therefore dubbed the Hoa Binh Reservoir effect.

It’s been more than two decades since Hanoians have had consistent  blackouts. Electricity was such a luxury then, however, that many families felt they could go without. A big part of the residents didn’t have televisions, electric fans, stoves or microwaves, not to mention
air conditioners. The luxury only benefited the well off, who were in the minority.

Presently, however, as electricity is part of day-to-day life, problems have come nonetheless, even with extensive energy saving awareness. Water plants cannot operate, which has caused water shortages in many residential areas. Half of the street lights in Ha Noi were out, all exterior commercial billboards were out, as were 50-70 per cent of interior commercial billboards.

Worse, in many already crammed intersections of the city, traffic lights have been going out, causing phenomenal congestion, which has been compounded by the increased number of people that rush out to escape the infernos their homes become with no electricity.

Early last week, a blackout in the City Traffic Lights Control Centre partially terminated traffic lights and surveillance cameras in most intersections in the city centre. Head of the centre, Nguyen Duc Thang, said the one generator online at the centre couldn’t hold up the entire grid.

In many people’s homes, electric appliances fell silent. Many parents took their kids to Trang Tien Plaza, Vincom Trade Centre, and supermarkets to window shop, but primarily to escape the stifling air at home. Others went to the newly built Ly Thai To Monument on the edge of Hoan Kiem Lake, Ba Dinh Square in front of the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum, or the spacious sidewalks along the West Lake.

A Lao Dong reporter took a snapshot of two girls sitting on the bank of the Thanh Cong Lake and sorting vegetables for their family’s meal.

Thanh Cong residential area could have been the hardest hit in the city, where
electricity was out from 4 a.m. to 9 p.m. for four consecutive days.

Tran Van Duoc, deputy general director of Electricity of Viet Nam, reported Viet Nam will reduce hydropower production by 12 per cent in 15 years. He explains that, due to an ever-increasing demand of power, coupled with the unavoidable increase in natural catastrophes, such as long and extensive droughts, the energy sector should reduce its
dependence on nature.

Power plants nationwide produce presently a total 11,360 MW, 36 per cent of which comes from hydropower production. Duoc says the proportion is expected to drop to 33 per cent in 2010 and 24 per cent by 2020.

Meanwhile, some argue that the crisis in the northern region over the past two weeks should be attributed to a problematic factor in the power sector – a monopoly.

The sector’s organisation, mostly caused by its monopoly status, cannot afford to meet the predictable soaring demand in electricity for consumers and production, Luu Quang wrote in the Lao Dong newspaper.

Like in the post and telecommunication, oil and gas and aviation sectors, a monopoly in the energy sector kills competition. Local and foreign investors have no reason to conduct business in a sector that is completely capped by a State monopoly. Mobilising US$2 billion each year to invest in energy development is an impossible mission, though seemingly necessary, as is an overhaul and reshuffle of the sector’s organisation, where power loss sucks up 15 to 20 per cent of total production costs.

For whatever the reason, blacking out the entire city to save electricity should only be a temporary solution. Frugality does not mean much when problematic issues, in the end, are left unsolved.