The ever-present yearning the local islanders have ever cherished for years is to have their lives lighted.

In fact, power supply does exist on the island, but only available from 17.00h to 23.00h, intermittently. Therefore the islanders have been frequently facing scarcity of power for daily consumption due to exorbitant cost to operate the existing diezel power generator.

A month ago, a fact-finding mission from ADB headed by Mr. Pradeep Perera, an energy specialist of ADB’s Southeast Asia Department Infrastructure Division met with Quang Ngai Provincial Authorities about an ADB potential loan for an electricity project to be implemented in this Quang Ngai’s island of Ly Son.

Mr. Pradeep Perera said ADB had been considering a soft loan package for construction power generation plants in Central Vietnam’s remote areas to bring light to disadvantaged and poor people. And Quang Ngai’s Ly Son was among the 8 project sites, which might set a model to replicate in other places.

More recently, another mission from ADB had conducted a site survey in the island for the said electricity project. Mr. Per Nogaard, a wind-power specialist sent by ADB to the survey, confirmed:”The island’s need of electricity for daily consumption and production is great; some island-based factories have to close down their operation because of electrictiy scarcity due to exorbitant cost of fuels to operate the existing diezel generator.”

He also suggested a diezel-assisted wind power station to ensure constant power supply for the island permanently. However, the power price seemed the toughest challenge that always discouraged either investors or consumers. So, a thorough assessment should be done to see its feasibility before ADB could decide to approve the loan.

With regard to the price, Director of EVN Quang Ngai, Mr. Nguyen Tu revealed at the meeting, Vietnam’s Power Company 3 (PC3) incurred a loss of over VND 9 billion to partly supply power for the island residents. That was because PC3 charged merely VND 700 per KWh on the average, meanwhile he added, EVN could only reach the break even point in supplying power in the island when the tariff charged on electricity should be at least VND 6,500 per KWh which appeared impossible for the poor islanders to afford.

Tu said PC3 can hardly keep on subsidising the islanders’ power consumption.

Earlier in 2006, a Germany-owned company was licenced to construct there a wind-operated power plant. However, the wind regime on the island is not stable and does not seem sufficient to operate the plant. Therefore, the plant was designed wind-operated with 65% of diezel backup.

However, there has been nothing done since then, and the project may be revoked soon. The main reason for this German company’s procrastination of implementation of the project is perhaps nothing other than the cost of generated power.

In this context, ADB and Quang Ngai Authorities should closely coperate with one another to conduct a thorough survey at the grassroots level to learn for sure the maximum power tariff the islanders can afford.

ADB at the same time should also collect wind and sunpower data of the island for analysis to see any feasibility to build a power plant combining wind and solar energy to generate for sake of reducing construction and operation cost.

It is said that Vietnamese Government has been in talk for ADB USD 53 million soft loan with the interest rate of 1%/year for 34 years and a grace period of 8 years for power generation plants in Central Vietnam’s remote areas, including Ly Son Island of Quang Ngai province.

M.T