Vietnam commissions feasibility study for battery storage

GE Power and the U.S. Trade and Development Agency (USTDA) announced that GE’s Energy Consulting business has been awarded a USTDA funded battery storage feasibility study by Vietnam Electricity (EVN).

On September 5. 2018, USTDA announced a grant award to EVN, Vietnam’s state-owned power company, to examine the feasibility of deploying advanced energy storage technologies in Vietnam.  Surging economic growth in Vietnam has fueled electricity demand, with an estimated 8% annual load growth through 2035. Thus, Vietnam will need about an additional 93 GW of capacity, which is planned to be sourced from a mix of generation and transmission sources, including renewable resources. Vietnam has set a goal of 10% renewables integration by 2030. Current generation and transmission operations are near capacity limits, which makes long-term reliability challenging. The surging economy is increasing demand on an already challenged grid. Considering these existing grid challenges and Vietnam’s future plans, it is both timely and essential for a study to be conducted to assess how to strengthen the grid to support the country’s renewable integration goals.

Officials from EVN, GE and USTDA gathered for a signing ceremony at the U.S. State Department on Friday, April 12 in Washington, D.C. Experts from GE’s Energy Consulting business will perform both economic and technical analyses to determine the viability and options for large scale battery storage deployment on the grid with EVN and their subsidiary, the National Load Dispatch Center (NLDC) with the target date of completion for the study in early 2020.

This new study will provide valuable potential solutions to EVN and NLDC to improve grid performance. Recommendations and analysis from the study will help EVN and NLDC determine how much battery energy storage and/or related transmission devices (FACTS or others) to employ and where on the system to deploy it. These new technologies have the potential to help manage the existing grid challenges faced by the Vietnamese system operator.

The project will be conducted and managed from the GE offices in Schenectady, NY. This project continues the collaboration between EVN and GE. In 2014, EVN partnered with Energy Consulting to evaluate the impact of high penetration of wind power on its system.