From January to June this year, the southern electricity system has had no backup source left since coal and gas-fired power plants are operating at full capacity. Therefore, the risk of power shortfall would be great if coal-fired plants don’t operate stably or there is an unforeseen incident at a large thermal power generator, said HCMC Power Corporation (EVN HCMC) at its customer conference last Friday.

In July, Ca Mau Gas Complex will disrupt supply for 14 days for repair and maintenance. During these days, the national electricity system will lack capacity and transmission lines in the south will be overloaded.

So, Ca Mau Power Plant will switch to operating on diesel oil and seeking assistance from the generator of O Mon Power Plant.

In September, the gas block 06.1 (consisting of two natural gas fields Lan Tay and Lan Do located 370 kilometers offshore Ba Ria-Vung Tau) will disconnect supply for seven days to expand the wastewater treatment system. In addition, Nam Con Son Gas Plant will stop supply for one day for maintenance.

So during this time, several generators of Phu My, Ba Ria, Nhon Trach 1, Nhon Trach 2, Phu My 2-2 and Phu My 3 will run on oil to prevent overload on the southern grid.

Speaking to the Daily on the sidelines of the conference, Nguyen Tan Loc, deputy general director of Vietnam Electricity Group (EVN), said the cost of generating power from diesel oil would be high. It will cost about VND5 trillion to produce one billion kWh of electricity from oil, he estimated.

During the dry season this year, EVN will generate more than two billion kWh of electricity from diesel oil for the southern region.

In the first four months of 2013, power consumption rose 11.5% year-on-year. However, so far, no coal or gas-fired power plant has switched to running on diesel oil.

Regarding power price, Loc said the price of coal sold to power plants had been adjusted according to the market. Power price will also be adjusted this way, meaning output prices will increase in accordance with input price hikes, he said.

At present, the national power capacity is nearly 25,500 MW. This year, the capacity will be raised by some 2,600 MW, bringing the total capacity to over 28,100 MW.

Hydropower contributes 44% to the national power supply, while coal and gas-fired thermal power makes up 44.4%, oil-fired thermal power 4.6%, imported power 3.8% and other sources 2.9%.