Vietnamese company BIM Group and Filipino firm AC Energy have completed and connected to the grid 330MW of PV capacity spread across three projects in Ninh Thuan, Vietnam, with one 250MW plant being the largest solar installation in Southeast Asia to date.<\/p>\n
Work began on the projects in January 2018 and took around nine months to complete, with a\u00a0power purchase agreement (PPA) being signed with monopoly utility EVN at the end of last year. Grid connection for the\u00a0BIM 1 (30MW), BIM 2 (250MW) and BIM 3 (50MW) solar power plants took place earlier this month.<\/p>\n
Rivalling these projects, a Thai and Vietnamese partnership are also working on a\u00a0420MW plant in Tay Ninh<\/span><\/a>\u00a0due for completion in June.<\/p>\n Collectively, the BIM plants required VND7,000 billion (US$301 million) investment. They will provide power to the equivalent of 200,000 households, producing\u00a0600 million kWh annually.<\/p>\n BIM Energy and AC Energy of major Filipino corporation Ayala Group had established a joint venture to\u00a0develop renewable energy projects in Ninh Thuan Province. This province has high levels of irradiation but has also been subject to fears about grid and transmission capacity given the high concentration of solar plants being developed there. This is why the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MOIT) recently updated its next feed-in tariff (FiT) rules incentivising developers to set up projects in less sunny parts of the country and spreading the load.<\/p>\n However, BIM also owns what is said to be the largest\u00a0Salt Industrial Economic Zone in Southeast Asia across \u200b\u200bmore than 2,200 hectares in Ninh Thuan.<\/p>\n Doan Quoc Huy, vice chairman of BIM Group, general director of BIM Energy Renewable Energy, said: \u201cBIM Group oriented to become the leading pioneer investor in renewable energy in Vietnam to 2022, the total clean energy capacity supplied by BIM Energy will reach a total scale of 1,000MWp of solar and wind power. With the inauguration of a cluster of three plants with the largest capacity in a short period of time is a testament to BIM Group’s long-term commitment to clean energy. We look forward to contributing and joining to protect the environment, fight climate change, support national energy security, build sustainable energy sources for the country’s future.\u201d<\/p>\n BIM said that it will continue to work with partners including\u00a0EPC providers<\/span><\/a>\u00a0France’s Bouygues Energies of France, and Germany’s juwi, which announced it had bagged a contract for 30MW and 50MW plants from BIM\u00a0last October<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n