Dataset of wind power projects in Vietnam, 2022-05

Minh Ha-Duong1

2022-10-18

Abstract
This dataset is an historical list of wind power projects in Vietnam, updated 2022-05-04. The list
contains 548 records, among which 360 refer to active projects. It includes the generation capacity, the
project’s location at the commune level, its stage classified on the Preliminary / Development /
Implementation / Operation / Decommission scale, and whether it is onshore, nearshore or offshore.
The sample includes all 146 projects with a Power Purchase Agreement as reported by EVN on 2021-11-
02, of which 84 are in Operation projects. No wind project was allowed to start commercial operations
between 2021-11-01 and the 2022-05-04. Project investment costs are available for 215 projects. We
obtained the dataset by reviewing only public sources: national power development plan updates,
provincial investment plans decisions ; the press and the professional literature. This dataset can be
used for energy system research and modelling, for policy analysis at the provincial and national levels,
and to better understand the market conditions. It provides an inspirational example of how fast it is
possible to switch to renewable energy on a national scale. Climate change mitigation requires more
stories like this one.

Keywords
Wind power; Vietnam; Investment cost; Energy transition

1 CIRED, CNRS, France. Corresponding author: [email protected]

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Specifications Table

Subject Economics, Econometrics and Finance

(General)

Energy Engineering and Power Technology

Specific subject area Economics of Renewable Energy; Wind
power
Type of data Table.
How data were acquired Data was acquired by desk research from open
public sources.
Data format Open Document Spreadsheet
Parameters for data collection Past and present wind power projects with
generation capacity greater than 1 MWp
located in Vietnam including islands and
offshore.
Description of data collection Data collection is a desk-based process started
in August 2019 with an exhaustive literature
review, periodically updated based on releases
from the national energy administration.
Data source location Hanoi, Vietnam
Data accessibility Repository name: Zenodo

Data identification number: DOI

10.5281/zenodo.3698080 (latest version of the
dataset)

Direct URL to data:

https://zenodo.org/record/6517279 (version
described in this manuscript)
Related research article Ha-Duong, Minh. 2023-06-01. “Technology
costs for the first wave of wind farms in
Vietnam: Paying extra for better wind
nearshore”. Energy for Sustainable
Development 74, pp. 309–313. doi:
10.1016/j.esd.2023.04.010. eprint:
https://hal.science/hal-03127371.

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Value of the Data
The dataset documents the history of the Vietnam wind power sector. Its value is:
· It provides an inspirational example of how fast it is possible to switch to renewable energy on
a national scale. Climate change mitigation requires more stories like this one.
· Researchers can use this dataset to study renewable energy economics and technical change.
· Policymakers everywhere can examine the structure of this dataset to design elements of their
national renewable energy information system.
· Policymakers in Vietnam can use this dataset for grid development and investment planning at
the provincial and national levels, for example to organize auctions.
· Business analysts have a strong interest in datasets like this one to understand the market.
· This dataset is unique because it is much more complete and up to date than those available
from commercial energy data providers. It is free to use, under a permissive license. And it is
more comprehensive than electricity network operators lists since it includes projects of
historical interest that never materialized.

Data Description
The dataset is formatted in one table with 548 records. Each corresponds to a wind power project at
some point recognized by the local or national authorities. The following fields describe the records:

Status
• Zoned (120 records) There are historical records. They have no identified investor / project
holder, but have an estimated capacity in some official documents.
• Normal (360 records) records describe active projects proceeding normally. They presumably
have an investor, even if its identity is not available.
• Ghosted (58 records) when there was a named investor, but we presume abandon since we did
not find evidence of recent project activity. The project may have been sold to another investor
and appear elsewhere in the table.
• Delayed (7 records) when a source affirms the project is delayed.
• Canceled (3 records) when a source affirms that the project’s investment certificate is canceled.

Project Stages
Records that are in Normal status are further qualified with a Project Stage. The project lifecycle model
comprises five stages (Trần Tuấn Anh 2019; Aurélien Agut et al. 2016, chap. 2):
A – Preliminary development (194 records, 52240,9 MW). An identified project holder has signed an
exclusivity MoU. Activities are site selection, wind measurement, pre-feasibility study.
B – Development (53 records, 5 514 MW). Projects which don’t have a PPA yet but are conducting
development activities such as feasibility study, technical design, land clearance. This stage seeks to
include all projects integrated into the national Power Development Plan. Most project holders obtain
their provincial Decision on Investment shortly after being integrated in the PDP. The dataset includes
53 records (5 514 MW) which is more than the 3 569.5 MW of projects in the PDP without PPA.
C – Implementation (58 records, 3 397.4 MW). The dataset is aligned with the 58 projects in the PDP
having a power purchase agreement (Ngô 2021, app. 2) but not connected to the grid by October 2022.

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The groundbreaking ceremony took place, but this is not a sufficient sign that a project’s
implementation is still active. Activities are detailed design, financing, construction, training operators,
commissioning, testing, trial runs.
D – Operation (91 records, 4 862.4 MW). After the Commercial Operation Date. The dataset includes the
84 projects listed in (Ngô 2021, app. 3) as having commercial operational delivery by the end of October
2021, plus the four projects which completed the formalities since. The dataset splits the Bac Lieu
project in two records, since the first and the second phases were economically and technically very
distinct. The dataset also records the wind components in the minigrids on the Phú Quý (6 MW) and the
Bạch Long Vĩ (1 MW) islands.

Project phase name

Projects are usually divided into a small number of phases. The name is in Vietnamese. The name is
usually unambiguously defined from the official documents. For projects with a complicated life story,
aliases and former project names are optionally mentioned between parenthesis. This field is the key
record identifier and used to sort the table alphabetically.

Project Owner
The name is in Vietnamese, or in English for foreign companies (with country code between
parenthesis). Projects are oftentimes legally owned by a special purpose vehicle company (SPV). The
interesting information is who own the SPV. We record the name investors, parent companies or
parent group.
Warning: projects shares are routinely sold and we did not seek to follow the market for project
ownership.

Project location fields

Field names ấp, Xã, Huyện means Hamlet, Commune, and District / Town. All these fields are multi-
valued, as many projects extend over several communes.
Tỉnh means Province. Vùng means Region. Both fields are always non-empty and univalued, as official
documents are usually organized by Province and Region.
The Location type can be Onshore (346 records), Intertidal (126 records), Offshore (49 records). This is a
fuzzy categorization. Legally, the Feed-in tariff recognized only onshore/offshore categories. Intertidal
projects benefited from the Offshore tariff, there is no “far offshore” projects operational in the
database.

Project characteristics fields

Capacity (MWp). This is the sum of installed turbines nameplate capacities, as built.
Connection plan. Future iterations of the dataset may include a description of the length and voltage of
the connection line, but for now. this is a free-text field with less than 100 records covered.
Turbines. Future iterations of the dataset may include the number, brand and type of machines, but for
now, it is a free-text field with less than 100 records covered.
Investment. It is available for 215 records, which allows econometric research. Investment is normally
quoted in billion VND and obtained from the official Investment Certificate. The original certificate was
not always available for download, in many instances we used the number quoted in the press.
Investment numbers for projects at the Preliminary stage are aspirational: their wind measurement
campaign is ongoing and they do not have an investment certificate. We were not able to find

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investment in VND for all cases and there are still 18 investments given in US dollars – only one for an
operational project.
The dataset records the following project milestones dates: Exclusivity MoU, Decision on Investment,
Groundbreaking event, Expected COD, Actual COD. They are available for less than 100 records. The
Purchasing Power Agreement signature date, the Power Plan addition date, and financial events are not
recorded in this dataset.

Data pedigree fields

The housekeeping fields Date and By allow tracing who last modified the record and when. In this
version the ‘Project stage’ is up to date for Operational projects. Records classified at the
Implementation are those with a power purchase agreement. They are in a variety of situations, from
the four projects build which did not complete testing on time to obtain the COD certificate, to frozen
projects quietly waiting better economic visibility to start reinvesting.
A Note field provides for additional comments.
The next ten fields allow tracing the information to specific official sources, as discussed in the next
section.
The next eights fields allow to trace other sources used.

Experimental Design, Materials, and Methods

Material and methods
The dataset was assembled by desk research. We used only public sources, no confidential insider
information. The Bibliography section lists a sample of our sources. The complete list of sources is
within the dataset. Each record includes one or several links to the information source(s). We organize
our sources into three categories: Technical reports, News and Official documents.
• The initial collection phase relied on technical reports such as (Tuong Do 2019b; GIZ 2016).
These provide historical information on the early projects. Few of those were built. Wikipedia
is not a source but an outlet : our research team contributes to updating pages.
• We updated and extended the initial dataset by scraping the News archives of the Vietnam
Clean Energy Association and the Vietnam Energy Association. We also used the archives from
the Ministry of Industry and Trade’s, from Provincial People’s Committees and from other
local organizations. News outlets like these are quasi-official information sources, they
disseminate publicly and sometimes contextualize the press releases from the developers and
from the authorities. They particularly inform about groundbreaking events, provincial plans
and Investment Certificates.
• National and sometimes provincial authorities publish official Directives and Letters. The
national documents list authorized projects, those included in the national Power
Development Plan, e.g. (Trịnh Đình Dũng 2020b; Hoàng Quốc Vượng 2020; Đặng Hoàng An
2020). The provincial documents tend to list projects earlier in the development cycle, before
they are included in the Plan, e.g. (Võ Ngoc Thành 2020; Hoàng Quốc Vượng 2012).

Coverage
On 2 November 2021, EVN Letter 6742 (Ngô 2021) listed the FIT period results. EVN signed a power
purchase agreement (PPA) with 146 wind projects. By the end of October 2021, 84 achieved commercial

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operational delivery (COD), representing a 3 980 MW generation capacity. Of those, 69 (3 655 MW) were
completed in full, and 15 (325 MW) in part. 62 projects (3 479 MW) did not achieve COD. Of those, 4
(178 MW) are connected to the grid, but did not complete the testing on time to obtain their COD
certificate.
According to (H. C. Nguyễn 2022) issued in January 2022, 11.921 MW were authorized, 146 projects
(8 171,475 MW) signed a power purchase agreement. By 31/10/221, 84 projects (3 980,265 MW) obtained
the COD certificate, of which 15 only partially (325,15 MW COD, 1 0131,10 MW non-COD).
According to (Nguyễn Hỗng Diên 2022) issued in July 2022, 4.126 MW of wind power had entered into
operation and are benefiting from FIT according to Decisions of the Prime Minister. In addition, 62
wind power projects with total capacity of 3.479 MW have entered into power purchase agreement with
EVN but do not have electricity sale price due to expired FIT. Some other projects are in the middle of
implementation process.
The draft power development plan (MOIT 2022, para. II.1.1.c) reference 5709 issued in September 2022
recognizes that 188 projects (11.741MW) were allowed under the power development plan 7, of which
146 projects (8.171,48 MW) signed a power purchase agreement with EVN. By 31/10/2022, 88 projects
(4 119.8 MW) achieved commercial operating delivery. Over 99% of projects, 187 (1 .621 MW) are located
in the Center and the South.
This dataset includes projects listed in MOIT 2020 letters 1931, 3299, 7201, 7408 and 10052. This ensures
that it was exhaustive at that date regarding projects at the B - Development, C - Implementation and D
– Operation stages. The dataset was further updated with EVN Letter 6742/EVN-TTD (Ngô 2021).
At the end of 2020 the national energy authorities froze the instruction of new wind energy projects for
the short term. At the same time, the national energy authorities asked provinces for lists of wind
power projects to be considered in the long-term planning. Only the list from Binh Dinh province
Letter 6826/UBND-KT is included in the dataset. While the dataset lists 163 projects at the A –
Preliminary stage, we have no reason to believe it is exhaustive at this level.
The dataset has name, capacity and location for the 146 projects with a PPA. The investment amount is
available for 90/91 records at stage D - Operation, 52/58 records at stage C - Implementation, 21/53
records at stage B – Development.

Qualitative historical description of the sector

This section reuses material from (Ha-Duong et al. 2022).
The sample is quasi cross-sectional: it describes a wave of projects implemented synchronously. This is
somewhat atypical. In many countries, renewable energy sources have entered the market over a long
period, ten years or more. Expansion of wind power in Vietnam fits better a step function than an
exponential. After fifteen years of trials with negligible installed capacities, 4 GW were delivered in
October 2021 (Do et al. 2021).
The Bạch Long Vĩ island hybrid diesel + wind project inaugurated on 30 October 2004 was a false start,
not appropriate to the local capacities at the time. Vietnam's first high-capacity wind farm, 30 MW, was
inaugurated in the central province of Bình Thuận on 18 April 2012. The next two projects – the Phú
Quý island hybrid grid with 6 MW and the nearshore Bạc Liêu phase 1 with 16 MW – both completed in
2013. These three pioneer projects had their lot of technical trouble: one turbine of the Phú Quý system
broke down unrepaired; the wind farm in Bình Thuận had acute thermal management issues; the
construction of Bac Liêu phase 2 stalled for years. No new capacity was added in 2014 or 2015. The
83 MW Bạc Liêu phase 2 finally completed in 2016. That year also delivered the 24 MW Phú Lạc project

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in Bình Thuậnh province. The following year, the 30 MW Hướng Linh 2 project in the Quảng Trị
province connected. In 2018, the total installed wind power capacity in Vietnam reached 228 MW.
Then Government's Decision 39 (X. P. Nguyễn 2018) raised the Feed-in tariff for wind power projects in
Vietnam. From 78 USD / MWh since 2011, it jumped to 85 USD / MWh for onshore wind power projects
and 98 USD / MWh for offshore wind power projects (Nguyễn Xuân Phúc 2018). The new electricity
tariff applies to a part or whole of the grid-connected wind power projects with commercial operation
date before 1 November 2021. The tariff will apply for 20 years from the date of commercial operation.
Already operating projects will benefit from the tariffs retroactively from 1 November 2018 for the
signed power purchase agreement's remaining period.
On 19 March 2020, Letter 1931 noted: "only nine wind power projects with a capacity of 350 MW have
been put into operation so far" and "Total capacity of wind power projects already added to the
Planning is approximately 4 800 MW" (Hoàng Quốc Vượng 2020). Following up, Decision 795 approved
the addition of 6 924 MW of wind power projects to the Electricity Masterplan VII (Trịnh Đình Dũng
2020b). Overall there was about 11 000 MW of wind power projects in Vietnam on the starting line to
beat the November 2021 deadline.
Letter 10052 issued at the end of 2020 identified the second wave of about 6 500 MW of wind power
projects proposed for inclusion into the next electricity masterplan (Đặng Hoàng An 2020). However, as
of January 2021, that wave has not been approved by the Prime Minister. These projects would have no
chance to deliver before November 2021.

Acknowledgements
We acknowledge the contributions from Minh-Quan Tong and Hoang Nguyen, staff at the Vietnam
Initiative for Energy Transition Social Enterprise (VIET SE). Nguyen Thi Lan Anh contributed to the
2021 version of the dataset.

Competing Interests
HDM research visit at VIET SE received financial support from the European Climate Foundation. The
authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships which
have, or could be perceived to have, influenced the work reported in this article. The authors have no
financial relation with the Wind Energy business.

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