Director of the Ho Chi MinhCity Energy Conservation Center (ECC-HCMC) Huynh Kim Tuoc said thatVietnam has great potential for solar power especially in the centraland southern regions of the country, which have many hours of sunshineand high solar radiation intensity.

Thus, the Government’spolicy should strive to increase the proportion of renewable energysources to about 8% of the total primary commercial energy consumptionby 2020 and 11% by 2050. To realise this goal, localities, including HoChi Minh City have actively cooperated with businesses to support usersby up to 1 million per machine.

Thanks to this, in recent yearsthe market for water heaters using solar energy has grown quickly withvarious providers. The Ministry of Industry and Trade (MOIT) shows thatin 2011, the whole country had over 30 industrial works with about42,000 machines sold each year, an average growth of 20% per year.Particularly, in Ho Chi Minh City, about 30,000-40,000 machines areinstalled each year, one in every two newly built houses is installedwith a water heater using solar energy.

To increase thelocalisation rate, in 2009, the Red Sun Energy Joint Stock Company wasthe first solar battery manufacturing company in Vietnam.

Inaddition, the country has about 90 companies specialising inmanufacturing and trading of solar power products, especially waterheaters. Several models of products have been exported to neighbouringmarkets such as Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar.

The number ofmachines sold is increasing rapidly and people’s awareness of takingfull advantage of renewable energy sources has been improved , howeverthe solar power market in Vietnam has left many worried. It is easy torecognize that Vietnam’s product designs are simple and the scale ofindustrial production is not great so is it difficult to compete withimported products.

Besides, the majority of solar poweredmachine manufacturing enterprises in Vietnam are just at the earlystages of production. For example, vacuum tube technology (which makesup 70% of total products in the market) now has to be imported fromChina, and the solar power flat plates are also imported from Taiwan andMalaysia.

Additionally, a series of projects producing solarpower battery panels in Vietnam are meeting difficulties, which havecaused slow production or even stop production. In April 2011, the USFirst Solar Group had to announce the cessation of a project with aninvestment of 1.2 billion USD in an industrial zone in southeastern HoChi Minh City after the official launch eight months ago.

TheManagement Board of the Chu Lai Open Economic Zone also admitted theproject on solar power battery production by Dong Duong Power IndustryLimited Company with an investment capital of 390 million USD had toslacken the implementation progress due to difficulties relating tomarkets and the manufacturing industry. Most recently, the 300 millionUSD project carried out by the Worldtech Transfer Investment Joint StockCompany in Thua Thien - Hue has also officially stopped.

At arecent workshop on solar power held by the Ho Chi Minh City Centre forScience and Technology Information, Director of the Ho Chi Minh CityDepartment of Science and Technology Phan Minh Tan affirmed that withsolar power technologies Vietnam has not produced, transfer connectivitysolutions is necessary.

The technologies must be suitable withVietnam’s climatic conditions, regardless of the technolog꧃ies of China,the US or Europe.-VNA