Song Hong
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This is a nice Chinese article on Vietnam power situation, google translate as below. Fk those guys who keep brandishing renewables and LNG for Vietnam.
I always advocate using coal in Quang Ninh.
Vietnam Dang Cong San has not enough talents to understand the situation fully,
***********
This year's northern hemisphere summer has seen record high temperatures. Earlier, a piece of news about Vietnam's electricity shortage caught everyone's attention.
According to media reports, due to factors such as the high temperature and heat wave that triggered a surge in residents' electricity demand and the decline in hydropower output, many industrial parks in southern Vietnam experienced large-scale power outages.
According to the Vietnam Southern Power Company (EVNNPC), multiple regions in the country, including Bac Giang and Bac Ninh provinces, are facing rolling blackouts, and some industrial parks have also been affected. And these areas are the concentrated areas where Foxconn, Samsung, Canon and other foreign capitals have set up factories in Vietnam. The power outage hits them particularly hard. For the manufacturing industry, a power outage basically means a shutdown of production.
Considering that Vietnam's economic growth in recent years has mainly been driven by exports, and Vietnam's exports mainly rely on foreign-funded enterprises, the lack of electricity may directly affect Vietnam's exports and economic growth this year. The latest data show that Vietnam's exports fell by 13% in the first quarter of this year, and the situation in the second quarter does not look optimistic.
Vietnam is in trouble this time. Can "Made in Vietnam" withstand the "baking" test of this wave of heat?
The economic geography of Vietnam must first be explained. Vietnam is located in the eastern part of the Indochina Peninsula, with a land area of 330,000 square kilometers and a population of 97.468 million (2021). The climate is a tropical monsoon climate. It is a developing country dominated by agriculture and growing industry. Since the Vietnamese government started "reform and opening up" in 1986, the economy has entered a high-speed growth track, especially the growth of the manufacturing industry. The power generation in Vietnam has also risen rapidly, and the power industry has become a pillar industry of its national economy.
However, despite the tremendous development of the electric power industry, the phenomenon of power shortage is still prominent, and the problem has not been fundamentally resolved. According to information, Vietnam originally planned to have a total power generation of 265-278 billion kWh and an installed capacity of 60,000 MW by 2020; however, in 2018, its total power generation was only 192.1 billion kWh and its installed capacity was only 47,750 MW, which is still far from the planned target.
Vietnam's power operation is very tight. To fill the gap, electricity had to be imported from abroad. From 2005 to 2016, China's Guangxi alone sent a total of more than 1.1 billion kWh of electricity to Vietnam.
Unlike China, which mainly relies on thermal power, Vietnam's current power structure is basically a tripartite situation of hydropower (38.22%), thermal power (37.79%) and new energy; among the three, hydropower is the largest. But this year the situation is different from previous years. On June 8 local time, the US Climate Prediction Center (CPC) released a report stating that the El Niño phenomenon already exists and may gradually strengthen from 2023 to early 2024. Many countries in Southeast Asia, including Vietnam, have experienced record high temperatures this year due to the El Niño phenomenon.
Throughout May, the daily maximum temperature in Vietnam has been above 40 degrees. On May 6, a high temperature of 44.1 degrees Celsius even appeared in the central and northern regions of Vietnam, breaking the record for the highest temperature in history set in 2019. Sustained high temperature and dry weather caused a large amount of river evaporation and reduced runoff. In the first quarter, Vietnam's hydropower production fell by 10.5% year-on-year. This equates to an overall loss of 4% of Vietnam's power generation capacity.
Faced with declining hydropower capacity, the Vietnamese government decided to restart coal power generation to fill the gap. According to data from the General Administration of Customs of Vietnam, from January to May 2023, Vietnam's coal imports increased by 39.9% over the same period of the previous year. However, due to the backward technology and aging equipment of Vietnam's thermal power plants, it is difficult to greatly increase the power generation in a short period of time to fill the gap in hydropower, and it is even difficult to maintain its own full-load operation. As of June 6, the power generation capacity of the northern thermal power plant can only achieve 76.6%. Combined with the loss of hydropower, it is equivalent to losing about 13% of Vietnam's power generation capacity. As a result, the entire northern power system is expected to have a power gap of 4350MW.
As mentioned earlier, the industrial parks that Vietnam has focused on in recent years are also concentrated in the north. Recently, more than 10,000 companies, including the aforementioned Foxconn, Samsung, and Canon, have received notices from local power companies, hoping that they would take turns to cut power and reduce power consumption during peak periods. For manufacturing companies, it means stopping production. Therefore, the European Chamber of Commerce in Vietnam appeals to the Vietnamese government to take urgent measures to solve the power shortage problem as soon as possible, otherwise Vietnam will lose its status as a "reliable global manufacturing center (relative to China)".
It was under such circumstances that Vietnam purchased electricity from Guangxi again after a lapse of seven years. By the way, here is a point: Vietnam only stopped importing electricity from Guangxi in 2016, but it has not stopped importing electricity from Yunnan. Therefore, the so-called "re-export electricity to Vietnam after seven years" is only for Guangxi, not China as a whole. On May 23 this year, Vietnam and Guangxi officially signed a power purchase and sale agreement for the 110 kV Deep Trench-Mong Cai Interconnection Project in Dongxing City, Fangchenggang, Guangxi. According to the agreement, starting from May this year, Guangxi will transmit power to Vietnam through the 110 kV power interconnection line between Dongxing Deep Valley in Guangxi, China and Mong Cai, Vietnam. The main power supply area is around Mong Cai City, Vietnam.
So far, we can see clearly the reasons for Vietnam’s “electricity shortage”. In addition to objective factors such as the reduction of hydroelectric power generation caused by abnormal weather and the “disconnection” of thermal power plants’ technical equipment at critical moments, the more important and core reason lies in Vietnam’s attitude towards China.
As we all know, due to many complicated factors such as history and reality, Vietnam has always maintained a very deep guard against China. One of the specific manifestations of this precautionary mentality is that it consciously keeps a distance from China in many fields, especially in the field of infrastructure construction. A typical example is that Vietnam chose Japan instead of China to build its North-South high-speed railway.
Since the Sino-US trade war, Vietnam has been chosen by many international manufacturers who are trying to avoid risks as a manufacturing base to replace China, which has made Vietnam determined to "alienate" China to make its position clear. Specifically in the field of electricity, although Vietnam has always relied on electricity imports from China, as early as 2016, the Ministry of Electricity of Vietnam began to take the initiative to reduce the degree of electricity purchases from China, one of which was to stop purchasing electricity from Guangxi. In 2021, Nguyen Du Ninh, head of Vietnam's power system, went further and stated that by 2025, the import of Chinese electricity will be completely stopped and replaced by renewable energy. At present, renewable energy accounts for one-third of Vietnam's power structure, which shows that the efforts made over the years have been quite effective.
In fact, Vietnam has big ambitions. In May of this year, the Vietnamese government approved the "Eighth National Power Development Plan", which plans to invest US$134.7 billion in power development and will not build new coal power projects after 2030. This is to complete two things in one go, building the grid and transforming the energy. But unfortunately, due to its limited industrial technology strength, Vietnam has not yet gotten rid of its dependence on China's electricity. Even, with the occurrence of electricity shortage this year, the degree of dependence on China's electricity has increased instead.
What are the implications of this situation for China?
Given that Vietnam is one of China's important neighbors, China has always hoped to strengthen cooperation with Vietnam in the field of infrastructure construction and has made a lot of efforts to this end. Especially since the "Belt and Road" initiative was proposed in 2013, Vietnam is expected to become an important country for the energy industry to expand business, considering that Vietnam is an important part of the "Maritime Silk Road", and its economy has developed rapidly in recent years and the demand for electricity has greatly increased.
Therefore, accelerating the implementation of energy cooperation in the “Belt and Road” strategy in Vietnam is regarded as an important development and investment opportunity by Chinese energy companies, especially the equipment manufacturing industry. In addition to direct power exports through transmission lines, Chinese companies have also established local power companies in Vietnam in the form of joint ventures and cooperation. For example, the Xiaozhonghe Hydropower Station in Vietnam is located in Sabah City, Lao Cai Province, a mountainous area in the north of Vietnam. It is the horizontal unit with the highest water head in Southeast Asia (total power generation head is 863.6 meters), and it is also the first hydropower project in Vietnam to introduce foreign capital. The power station was developed and constructed by Vietnam-China Power Investment Co., Ltd., which was jointly invested and established by China Southern Power Grid Yunnan International Company and Vietnam Northern Electric Power Company, and was officially put into operation on December 28, 2012.
In the field of thermal power, in July 2018, in Binh Thuan Province, Vietnam, jointly invested by China Southern Power Grid Co., Ltd., China Power International Co., Ltd. and Vietnam Coal Electric Power Co., Ltd., Guangdong Electric Power Design and Research Institute Co., Ltd. under China Energy Construction Group Co., Ltd. and Guangdong Thermal Power Engineering Co., Ltd. jointly contracted and constructed Unit 1 of the Vietnam Yongxin Coal-fired Power Plant Phase I BOT Project, which was officially put into commercial operation. The project plans to build two 620,000-kilowatt supercritical coal-fired units. It is the largest power project invested by a Chinese company in Vietnam. It is also the first power project invested by a Chinese company in Vietnam using the BOT (Build-Operate-Transfer) model. After the 25-year franchise period expires, it will be handed over to the Vietnamese government free of charge.
In terms of renewable energy, which the Vietnamese authorities intend to vigorously develop, China also has strong strength. As we all know, China is currently the world's largest producer of photovoltaic power generation equipment. According to the data of the China Photovoltaic Association, in 2022, the national photovoltaic module production will reach 288.7GW, accounting for more than 88% of the world; the export volume will be about 153.6GW.
The largest export market for China's photovoltaic modules is Vietnam. Taking 2021 as an example, even without the release of exact policies and the outbreak of the new crown epidemic, the newly installed capacity of distributed photovoltaic projects in Vietnam is still close to 1GW. These photovoltaic equipment are basically imported from China. It can be said that it is with the support of Chinese equipment that Vietnam's renewable energy has made remarkable achievements beyond other countries in Southeast Asia.
In addition to photovoltaics, another direction of Vietnam's efforts in recent years is natural gas power generation. According to a report by "Vietnam News" in October 2019, the Coal and Petroleum Bureau of the Ministry of Industry and Commerce of Vietnam stated that in order to cope with the increase in domestic electricity demand, it plans to import liquefied natural gas. According to Deng Honghai, an official of the Electric Power and Renewable Energy Bureau of the Ministry of Industry and Commerce of Vietnam, Vietnam plans to increase its gas-fired power generation capacity to 19GW/year by 2030.
Generally speaking, gas turbines are ideal for generating electricity from natural gas. Because in terms of working principle, gas turbines are designed to use liquid and gaseous fuels. The gas turbine-steam turbine combined cycle unit can reach a maximum of 56%~85%, which is a level that is difficult to achieve for a steam turbine unit. Moreover, natural gas power plants using gas turbines can start and stop quickly, have strong load adaptability, and operate flexibly. Combustion-steam combined cycle power plants can operate with base load or in two shifts. As a power grid peaking unit, it helps to improve the security of the power grid. Flexible use and strong grid adaptability are the outstanding advantages of gas turbine power plants.
There are many types of gas turbines, which are usually used for power generation in power plants. They are heavy-duty gas turbines for power generation that are different from marine gas turbines. Compared with marine gas turbines, heavy-duty gas turbines mostly adopt a single-rotor structure and annular combustor, without a dedicated power turbine, and their volume and power output are relatively large. It is precisely in this field that China has made a series of breakthroughs in recent years. Among them, two projects are particularly worth mentioning, and they may also be the hope of Vietnam to solve the "power shortage".
One is the G50 F-class heavy-duty gas turbine developed by Deyang Dongfang Electric Group Dongfang Steam Turbine Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Dongfang Steam Turbine").
It should be noted that heavy-duty gas turbines can be divided into four grades according to the operating parameters, namely E grade (temperature before the turbine is 1150°C-1250°C), grade F (temperature before the turbine is 1300°C-1450°C), grade G/H (temperature before the turbine is 1500°C-1600°C) and grade J (initial gas temperature above 1600°C). Before 2009, Dongfang Steam Turbine had been cooperating with Japan's Mitsubishi Corporation to produce heavy-duty gas turbines. Although nearly 80% of heavy-duty gas turbines have been localized through the "market for technology", the remaining 20%, such as high-temperature components and other core technologies, are still imported and firmly controlled by foreign parties. This made Dongfang Steam Turbine firmly determined to independently develop and break through core technologies. In 2009, Dongfang Steam Turbine established the Dongfang Steam Turbine G50 Development Center, formed a scientific research team of more than 100 people, and successively invested nearly 2 billion yuan to start independent research and development of heavy-duty gas turbines.
After more than ten years of hard work, on June 18, 2019, the manufacture of the first prototype machine was completed. On September 27, 2019, the ignition test of the prototype machine was successful once, and the first test of the whole machine was successful. On May 12, 2020, the load test at the design speed was officially started; on November 27, it successfully achieved full-load and stable operation. On November 25, 2022, the equipment manufacturing of the first G50 commercial demonstration unit was completed, and it was officially shipped from Dongfang Steam Turbine Gas Turbine Assembly Workshop to Guangdong Huadian Qingyuan Overseas Chinese Park Gas Distributed Energy Station. In the early morning of December 31, this first nationally produced F-class 50MW heavy-duty gas turbine generator set, known as the "new era fighting machine", was successfully ignited in Guangdong Huadian Qingyuan Overseas Chinese Park Gas Distributed Energy Station Project and officially put into commercial operation. It is reported that Dongfang Electric Group will use the 50MW gas turbine as the parent machine in the future to derive more serialized models to meet the needs of different power levels and uses.
The other is the "Taihang 110/AGT-110" heavy-duty gas turbine developed by China Aviation Engine Group's Gas Turbine Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "AVIC Engine"). According to reports, this type of gas turbine passed the product verification and appraisal in Shenzhen on June 4, marking that the 110 MW heavy-duty gas turbine with independent intellectual property rights passed the verification of the whole machine, filling the gap in domestic products of this power level.
According to relevant reports, the Taihang 110/AGT-110 gas turbine is derived from the R0110 heavy-duty gas turbine developed by AVIC Engine. According to data, the compressor pressure ratio of the R0110 heavy-duty gas turbine is 14.7, and the temperature before the turbine is 1484K. If "the temperature before the turbine is above 1200 degrees Celsius and the pressure ratio is above 15" is used as the standard for F-class gas turbines, the performance of R0110 is just on the passing line of F-class gas turbines, which is higher than that of E-class gas turbines in the general sense, so it is called E+ class gas turbines.
From the appearance point of view, the biggest difference between AGT-110 and R0110 is the newly designed combustion chamber.
The reason for such a change may be a clue from a piece of news about Russia in May this year.
In May of this year, it was reported that Gazprom ("Gazprom") hoped to import AGT-110 heavy-duty gas turbines from AVIC Engines for the 330MW combined cycle thermal power plant project in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia).
In fact, Russia itself has heavy-duty gas turbines, which are GTD-110 heavy-duty gas turbines with the same technology as R0110; it was developed by the Russian "Lurika-Saturn" scientific research and production consortium, that is, the company that produced AL-31. However, judging from the use of GTD-110 in Russia, its performance is not ideal.
In 2009, the GTD-110 No. 5 unit was delivered to the Ryazan thermal power station under Gazprom. In 2012, the head of Gazprom Denis Fedorov severely criticized the device as "not the most successful technical solution". According to Denis Fedorov: "On the 110MW we installed in Ryazan, there were 58 outages in 2010 alone."
Considering that both GTD-110 and R0110 had the same problem in China and Russia—the first one failed and burned during the experiment, this may indicate that the original design of GTD-110/R0110 was flawed. To this end, both China and Russia have improved the prototype, and Russia's improved model is named GTD-110M. But unfortunately, in December 2017, the Saturn Consortium encountered a failure while testing the prototype of the GTD-110M, causing the gas turbine to be severely damaged. Since then, the development of this type of gas turbine has been progressing slowly. The Saturn Consortium will not complete the production of the first mass-produced GTD-110M until January 2023. It would be good to be able to complete the delivery and trial operation within this year, and there is still some time before it will be practical.
The improved model of R0110 in China is AGT-110. Unlike the fate of its Russian "brother", the development of the AGT-110 heavy-duty gas turbine has gone quite smoothly. In 2019, AGT-110 was listed as one of the first batch of gas turbine innovation and development demonstration projects by the National Energy Administration. On December 20, 2020, the AGT-110 heavy-duty gas turbine, that is, the new R0110 heavy-duty gas turbine that has undergone technical transformation and replaced with a new combustion chamber, rolled off the assembly line at China Aviation Gas Turbine Company in Shenyang.
In October 2022, AGT-110 passed 72 hours of continuous operation at full load at CNOOC Shenzhen Power Plant. By the end of 2022, the AGT-110 heavy-duty gas turbine has accumulated more than 14,000 equivalent hours of operation, of which the operating hours of a single unit exceed 7,000 equivalent hours. It can be seen that the AVIC engine has completely solved the problems existing on the R0110 prototype. This may also be the reason why Gazprom hopes to import AGT-110-to replace the long-awaited GTD-110M.
According to another source, AVIC plans to improve the combustion chamber and turbine on the basis of AGT-110, and combine the compressor of AGT-10 (the improved version of the original QC-70) to enlarge it to form an F-class heavy-duty gas turbine. If it can be realized, China will have a new fully autonomous F-class heavy-duty gas turbine after the G50.
In addition to these two models, there is also news that the F-class CGT-300F gas turbine of China United Reburning Company plans to complete assembly and start testing this year, and it will be put into use in 2025. Vietnam plans to increase the scale of imported natural gas to a higher level by 2026, but it can be used just in time.
It can be seen that China has the capabilities needed to solve Vietnam's power problems. If Vietnam is willing to strengthen energy and power cooperation with China, today's power shortage may not happen at all. In the final analysis, this is also Vietnam's choice of its own destiny. In this regard, the author can only say: Let go of the complex of helping others and respect the fate of others.
www.guancha.cn
I always advocate using coal in Quang Ninh.
Vietnam Dang Cong San has not enough talents to understand the situation fully,
***********
This year's northern hemisphere summer has seen record high temperatures. Earlier, a piece of news about Vietnam's electricity shortage caught everyone's attention.
According to media reports, due to factors such as the high temperature and heat wave that triggered a surge in residents' electricity demand and the decline in hydropower output, many industrial parks in southern Vietnam experienced large-scale power outages.
According to the Vietnam Southern Power Company (EVNNPC), multiple regions in the country, including Bac Giang and Bac Ninh provinces, are facing rolling blackouts, and some industrial parks have also been affected. And these areas are the concentrated areas where Foxconn, Samsung, Canon and other foreign capitals have set up factories in Vietnam. The power outage hits them particularly hard. For the manufacturing industry, a power outage basically means a shutdown of production.
Considering that Vietnam's economic growth in recent years has mainly been driven by exports, and Vietnam's exports mainly rely on foreign-funded enterprises, the lack of electricity may directly affect Vietnam's exports and economic growth this year. The latest data show that Vietnam's exports fell by 13% in the first quarter of this year, and the situation in the second quarter does not look optimistic.
Vietnam is in trouble this time. Can "Made in Vietnam" withstand the "baking" test of this wave of heat?
The economic geography of Vietnam must first be explained. Vietnam is located in the eastern part of the Indochina Peninsula, with a land area of 330,000 square kilometers and a population of 97.468 million (2021). The climate is a tropical monsoon climate. It is a developing country dominated by agriculture and growing industry. Since the Vietnamese government started "reform and opening up" in 1986, the economy has entered a high-speed growth track, especially the growth of the manufacturing industry. The power generation in Vietnam has also risen rapidly, and the power industry has become a pillar industry of its national economy.
However, despite the tremendous development of the electric power industry, the phenomenon of power shortage is still prominent, and the problem has not been fundamentally resolved. According to information, Vietnam originally planned to have a total power generation of 265-278 billion kWh and an installed capacity of 60,000 MW by 2020; however, in 2018, its total power generation was only 192.1 billion kWh and its installed capacity was only 47,750 MW, which is still far from the planned target.
Vietnam's power operation is very tight. To fill the gap, electricity had to be imported from abroad. From 2005 to 2016, China's Guangxi alone sent a total of more than 1.1 billion kWh of electricity to Vietnam.
Unlike China, which mainly relies on thermal power, Vietnam's current power structure is basically a tripartite situation of hydropower (38.22%), thermal power (37.79%) and new energy; among the three, hydropower is the largest. But this year the situation is different from previous years. On June 8 local time, the US Climate Prediction Center (CPC) released a report stating that the El Niño phenomenon already exists and may gradually strengthen from 2023 to early 2024. Many countries in Southeast Asia, including Vietnam, have experienced record high temperatures this year due to the El Niño phenomenon.
Throughout May, the daily maximum temperature in Vietnam has been above 40 degrees. On May 6, a high temperature of 44.1 degrees Celsius even appeared in the central and northern regions of Vietnam, breaking the record for the highest temperature in history set in 2019. Sustained high temperature and dry weather caused a large amount of river evaporation and reduced runoff. In the first quarter, Vietnam's hydropower production fell by 10.5% year-on-year. This equates to an overall loss of 4% of Vietnam's power generation capacity.
Faced with declining hydropower capacity, the Vietnamese government decided to restart coal power generation to fill the gap. According to data from the General Administration of Customs of Vietnam, from January to May 2023, Vietnam's coal imports increased by 39.9% over the same period of the previous year. However, due to the backward technology and aging equipment of Vietnam's thermal power plants, it is difficult to greatly increase the power generation in a short period of time to fill the gap in hydropower, and it is even difficult to maintain its own full-load operation. As of June 6, the power generation capacity of the northern thermal power plant can only achieve 76.6%. Combined with the loss of hydropower, it is equivalent to losing about 13% of Vietnam's power generation capacity. As a result, the entire northern power system is expected to have a power gap of 4350MW.
As mentioned earlier, the industrial parks that Vietnam has focused on in recent years are also concentrated in the north. Recently, more than 10,000 companies, including the aforementioned Foxconn, Samsung, and Canon, have received notices from local power companies, hoping that they would take turns to cut power and reduce power consumption during peak periods. For manufacturing companies, it means stopping production. Therefore, the European Chamber of Commerce in Vietnam appeals to the Vietnamese government to take urgent measures to solve the power shortage problem as soon as possible, otherwise Vietnam will lose its status as a "reliable global manufacturing center (relative to China)".
It was under such circumstances that Vietnam purchased electricity from Guangxi again after a lapse of seven years. By the way, here is a point: Vietnam only stopped importing electricity from Guangxi in 2016, but it has not stopped importing electricity from Yunnan. Therefore, the so-called "re-export electricity to Vietnam after seven years" is only for Guangxi, not China as a whole. On May 23 this year, Vietnam and Guangxi officially signed a power purchase and sale agreement for the 110 kV Deep Trench-Mong Cai Interconnection Project in Dongxing City, Fangchenggang, Guangxi. According to the agreement, starting from May this year, Guangxi will transmit power to Vietnam through the 110 kV power interconnection line between Dongxing Deep Valley in Guangxi, China and Mong Cai, Vietnam. The main power supply area is around Mong Cai City, Vietnam.
So far, we can see clearly the reasons for Vietnam’s “electricity shortage”. In addition to objective factors such as the reduction of hydroelectric power generation caused by abnormal weather and the “disconnection” of thermal power plants’ technical equipment at critical moments, the more important and core reason lies in Vietnam’s attitude towards China.
As we all know, due to many complicated factors such as history and reality, Vietnam has always maintained a very deep guard against China. One of the specific manifestations of this precautionary mentality is that it consciously keeps a distance from China in many fields, especially in the field of infrastructure construction. A typical example is that Vietnam chose Japan instead of China to build its North-South high-speed railway.
Since the Sino-US trade war, Vietnam has been chosen by many international manufacturers who are trying to avoid risks as a manufacturing base to replace China, which has made Vietnam determined to "alienate" China to make its position clear. Specifically in the field of electricity, although Vietnam has always relied on electricity imports from China, as early as 2016, the Ministry of Electricity of Vietnam began to take the initiative to reduce the degree of electricity purchases from China, one of which was to stop purchasing electricity from Guangxi. In 2021, Nguyen Du Ninh, head of Vietnam's power system, went further and stated that by 2025, the import of Chinese electricity will be completely stopped and replaced by renewable energy. At present, renewable energy accounts for one-third of Vietnam's power structure, which shows that the efforts made over the years have been quite effective.
In fact, Vietnam has big ambitions. In May of this year, the Vietnamese government approved the "Eighth National Power Development Plan", which plans to invest US$134.7 billion in power development and will not build new coal power projects after 2030. This is to complete two things in one go, building the grid and transforming the energy. But unfortunately, due to its limited industrial technology strength, Vietnam has not yet gotten rid of its dependence on China's electricity. Even, with the occurrence of electricity shortage this year, the degree of dependence on China's electricity has increased instead.
What are the implications of this situation for China?
Given that Vietnam is one of China's important neighbors, China has always hoped to strengthen cooperation with Vietnam in the field of infrastructure construction and has made a lot of efforts to this end. Especially since the "Belt and Road" initiative was proposed in 2013, Vietnam is expected to become an important country for the energy industry to expand business, considering that Vietnam is an important part of the "Maritime Silk Road", and its economy has developed rapidly in recent years and the demand for electricity has greatly increased.
Therefore, accelerating the implementation of energy cooperation in the “Belt and Road” strategy in Vietnam is regarded as an important development and investment opportunity by Chinese energy companies, especially the equipment manufacturing industry. In addition to direct power exports through transmission lines, Chinese companies have also established local power companies in Vietnam in the form of joint ventures and cooperation. For example, the Xiaozhonghe Hydropower Station in Vietnam is located in Sabah City, Lao Cai Province, a mountainous area in the north of Vietnam. It is the horizontal unit with the highest water head in Southeast Asia (total power generation head is 863.6 meters), and it is also the first hydropower project in Vietnam to introduce foreign capital. The power station was developed and constructed by Vietnam-China Power Investment Co., Ltd., which was jointly invested and established by China Southern Power Grid Yunnan International Company and Vietnam Northern Electric Power Company, and was officially put into operation on December 28, 2012.
In the field of thermal power, in July 2018, in Binh Thuan Province, Vietnam, jointly invested by China Southern Power Grid Co., Ltd., China Power International Co., Ltd. and Vietnam Coal Electric Power Co., Ltd., Guangdong Electric Power Design and Research Institute Co., Ltd. under China Energy Construction Group Co., Ltd. and Guangdong Thermal Power Engineering Co., Ltd. jointly contracted and constructed Unit 1 of the Vietnam Yongxin Coal-fired Power Plant Phase I BOT Project, which was officially put into commercial operation. The project plans to build two 620,000-kilowatt supercritical coal-fired units. It is the largest power project invested by a Chinese company in Vietnam. It is also the first power project invested by a Chinese company in Vietnam using the BOT (Build-Operate-Transfer) model. After the 25-year franchise period expires, it will be handed over to the Vietnamese government free of charge.
In terms of renewable energy, which the Vietnamese authorities intend to vigorously develop, China also has strong strength. As we all know, China is currently the world's largest producer of photovoltaic power generation equipment. According to the data of the China Photovoltaic Association, in 2022, the national photovoltaic module production will reach 288.7GW, accounting for more than 88% of the world; the export volume will be about 153.6GW.
The largest export market for China's photovoltaic modules is Vietnam. Taking 2021 as an example, even without the release of exact policies and the outbreak of the new crown epidemic, the newly installed capacity of distributed photovoltaic projects in Vietnam is still close to 1GW. These photovoltaic equipment are basically imported from China. It can be said that it is with the support of Chinese equipment that Vietnam's renewable energy has made remarkable achievements beyond other countries in Southeast Asia.
In addition to photovoltaics, another direction of Vietnam's efforts in recent years is natural gas power generation. According to a report by "Vietnam News" in October 2019, the Coal and Petroleum Bureau of the Ministry of Industry and Commerce of Vietnam stated that in order to cope with the increase in domestic electricity demand, it plans to import liquefied natural gas. According to Deng Honghai, an official of the Electric Power and Renewable Energy Bureau of the Ministry of Industry and Commerce of Vietnam, Vietnam plans to increase its gas-fired power generation capacity to 19GW/year by 2030.
Generally speaking, gas turbines are ideal for generating electricity from natural gas. Because in terms of working principle, gas turbines are designed to use liquid and gaseous fuels. The gas turbine-steam turbine combined cycle unit can reach a maximum of 56%~85%, which is a level that is difficult to achieve for a steam turbine unit. Moreover, natural gas power plants using gas turbines can start and stop quickly, have strong load adaptability, and operate flexibly. Combustion-steam combined cycle power plants can operate with base load or in two shifts. As a power grid peaking unit, it helps to improve the security of the power grid. Flexible use and strong grid adaptability are the outstanding advantages of gas turbine power plants.
There are many types of gas turbines, which are usually used for power generation in power plants. They are heavy-duty gas turbines for power generation that are different from marine gas turbines. Compared with marine gas turbines, heavy-duty gas turbines mostly adopt a single-rotor structure and annular combustor, without a dedicated power turbine, and their volume and power output are relatively large. It is precisely in this field that China has made a series of breakthroughs in recent years. Among them, two projects are particularly worth mentioning, and they may also be the hope of Vietnam to solve the "power shortage".
One is the G50 F-class heavy-duty gas turbine developed by Deyang Dongfang Electric Group Dongfang Steam Turbine Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Dongfang Steam Turbine").
It should be noted that heavy-duty gas turbines can be divided into four grades according to the operating parameters, namely E grade (temperature before the turbine is 1150°C-1250°C), grade F (temperature before the turbine is 1300°C-1450°C), grade G/H (temperature before the turbine is 1500°C-1600°C) and grade J (initial gas temperature above 1600°C). Before 2009, Dongfang Steam Turbine had been cooperating with Japan's Mitsubishi Corporation to produce heavy-duty gas turbines. Although nearly 80% of heavy-duty gas turbines have been localized through the "market for technology", the remaining 20%, such as high-temperature components and other core technologies, are still imported and firmly controlled by foreign parties. This made Dongfang Steam Turbine firmly determined to independently develop and break through core technologies. In 2009, Dongfang Steam Turbine established the Dongfang Steam Turbine G50 Development Center, formed a scientific research team of more than 100 people, and successively invested nearly 2 billion yuan to start independent research and development of heavy-duty gas turbines.
After more than ten years of hard work, on June 18, 2019, the manufacture of the first prototype machine was completed. On September 27, 2019, the ignition test of the prototype machine was successful once, and the first test of the whole machine was successful. On May 12, 2020, the load test at the design speed was officially started; on November 27, it successfully achieved full-load and stable operation. On November 25, 2022, the equipment manufacturing of the first G50 commercial demonstration unit was completed, and it was officially shipped from Dongfang Steam Turbine Gas Turbine Assembly Workshop to Guangdong Huadian Qingyuan Overseas Chinese Park Gas Distributed Energy Station. In the early morning of December 31, this first nationally produced F-class 50MW heavy-duty gas turbine generator set, known as the "new era fighting machine", was successfully ignited in Guangdong Huadian Qingyuan Overseas Chinese Park Gas Distributed Energy Station Project and officially put into commercial operation. It is reported that Dongfang Electric Group will use the 50MW gas turbine as the parent machine in the future to derive more serialized models to meet the needs of different power levels and uses.
The other is the "Taihang 110/AGT-110" heavy-duty gas turbine developed by China Aviation Engine Group's Gas Turbine Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "AVIC Engine"). According to reports, this type of gas turbine passed the product verification and appraisal in Shenzhen on June 4, marking that the 110 MW heavy-duty gas turbine with independent intellectual property rights passed the verification of the whole machine, filling the gap in domestic products of this power level.
According to relevant reports, the Taihang 110/AGT-110 gas turbine is derived from the R0110 heavy-duty gas turbine developed by AVIC Engine. According to data, the compressor pressure ratio of the R0110 heavy-duty gas turbine is 14.7, and the temperature before the turbine is 1484K. If "the temperature before the turbine is above 1200 degrees Celsius and the pressure ratio is above 15" is used as the standard for F-class gas turbines, the performance of R0110 is just on the passing line of F-class gas turbines, which is higher than that of E-class gas turbines in the general sense, so it is called E+ class gas turbines.
From the appearance point of view, the biggest difference between AGT-110 and R0110 is the newly designed combustion chamber.
The reason for such a change may be a clue from a piece of news about Russia in May this year.
In May of this year, it was reported that Gazprom ("Gazprom") hoped to import AGT-110 heavy-duty gas turbines from AVIC Engines for the 330MW combined cycle thermal power plant project in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia).
In fact, Russia itself has heavy-duty gas turbines, which are GTD-110 heavy-duty gas turbines with the same technology as R0110; it was developed by the Russian "Lurika-Saturn" scientific research and production consortium, that is, the company that produced AL-31. However, judging from the use of GTD-110 in Russia, its performance is not ideal.
In 2009, the GTD-110 No. 5 unit was delivered to the Ryazan thermal power station under Gazprom. In 2012, the head of Gazprom Denis Fedorov severely criticized the device as "not the most successful technical solution". According to Denis Fedorov: "On the 110MW we installed in Ryazan, there were 58 outages in 2010 alone."
Considering that both GTD-110 and R0110 had the same problem in China and Russia—the first one failed and burned during the experiment, this may indicate that the original design of GTD-110/R0110 was flawed. To this end, both China and Russia have improved the prototype, and Russia's improved model is named GTD-110M. But unfortunately, in December 2017, the Saturn Consortium encountered a failure while testing the prototype of the GTD-110M, causing the gas turbine to be severely damaged. Since then, the development of this type of gas turbine has been progressing slowly. The Saturn Consortium will not complete the production of the first mass-produced GTD-110M until January 2023. It would be good to be able to complete the delivery and trial operation within this year, and there is still some time before it will be practical.
The improved model of R0110 in China is AGT-110. Unlike the fate of its Russian "brother", the development of the AGT-110 heavy-duty gas turbine has gone quite smoothly. In 2019, AGT-110 was listed as one of the first batch of gas turbine innovation and development demonstration projects by the National Energy Administration. On December 20, 2020, the AGT-110 heavy-duty gas turbine, that is, the new R0110 heavy-duty gas turbine that has undergone technical transformation and replaced with a new combustion chamber, rolled off the assembly line at China Aviation Gas Turbine Company in Shenyang.
In October 2022, AGT-110 passed 72 hours of continuous operation at full load at CNOOC Shenzhen Power Plant. By the end of 2022, the AGT-110 heavy-duty gas turbine has accumulated more than 14,000 equivalent hours of operation, of which the operating hours of a single unit exceed 7,000 equivalent hours. It can be seen that the AVIC engine has completely solved the problems existing on the R0110 prototype. This may also be the reason why Gazprom hopes to import AGT-110-to replace the long-awaited GTD-110M.
According to another source, AVIC plans to improve the combustion chamber and turbine on the basis of AGT-110, and combine the compressor of AGT-10 (the improved version of the original QC-70) to enlarge it to form an F-class heavy-duty gas turbine. If it can be realized, China will have a new fully autonomous F-class heavy-duty gas turbine after the G50.
In addition to these two models, there is also news that the F-class CGT-300F gas turbine of China United Reburning Company plans to complete assembly and start testing this year, and it will be put into use in 2025. Vietnam plans to increase the scale of imported natural gas to a higher level by 2026, but it can be used just in time.
It can be seen that China has the capabilities needed to solve Vietnam's power problems. If Vietnam is willing to strengthen energy and power cooperation with China, today's power shortage may not happen at all. In the final analysis, this is also Vietnam's choice of its own destiny. In this regard, the author can only say: Let go of the complex of helping others and respect the fate of others.
