Laos has begun exporting power from a new wind turbine generation facility to neighbouring Vietnam, despite the country struggling to supply its own population.
The Monsoon Wind Power Company has begun generating electricity from its 600 megawatt wind power project in Laos to Vietnam’s national electricity grid. It’s the first transnational renewable energy agreement in Asia, and is due to last 25 years.
The Monsoon Wind Power Project comprises of 133 wind turbines and a 44 mile stretch of transmission lines that link Vietnam’s state-owned infrastructure with the 68,000 hectare installation in the Sekong and Attapeu Provinces over the border. There are four substations that combine the turbines’ output which is then sent over the border to Thailand’s Thanh My substation for distribution.
Multiple investors in the project include stakeholders from the Philippines, Thailand, Japan, and Laos. The project was financed by the Asian Development Bank which led investors from a similarly multinational range of financial institutions. Over the course of its construction, the Monsoon Wind Power Project employed over a thousand Lao nationals for two years. The Lao government says there were no re-settlements nor displacements of peoples necessary.
Contractors and companies from all over the world contributed components and expertise to the wind project, with POWER CHINA supplying the actual turbine hardware. Each turbine is capable of generating 4.51 megawatts of electricity, and has a rotor diameter of 171 metres, with blade lengths of 84m.
The generating facility is said to produce enough electricity that, were it generated using fossil fuels, would produce 1.3 million tonnes of CO_2.
The controlling company behind the project has established a fund that will generate over $1 million dollars a year destined for local education, healthcare, agricultural projects, and improvements to local infrastructure in the largely rural surroundings of the turbines and associated infrastructure. Despite the abundance of natural resources in Laos, it imports electricity during the dry season, from November to April, especially to urbanisations near its borders too distant from the domestic electricity grid. That’s down in part to its reliance on hydro-electric generation.
As of 2022, over 70% of power in Laos was generated by hydropower, a major element of the country’s goal to become the ‘battery of Asia,’ thanks to its rugged terrain and meteorology. A significant amount of energy generated with water is already exported to neighbouring countries such as Thailand, Cambodia, and China. Laos is said to possess massive further hydro-electric power potential, estimated at a possible 18,000 megawatts, due in part to the Mekong river that runs between Thailand and Laos.
Laos is attempting to diversify its power generation portfolio to include further wind and photovoltaic installations, but the country’s levels of debt mean that aspects of the industry such as local distribution infrastructure are less attractive to internal and external investors than projects that yield income from power exports.
(Image source: “along mekong” by Roberto.Trombetta is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.)
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