Major hydropower plants to be completed this year
Major hydropower plants to be completed this year
Three major hydropower plant construction projects in Luang Prabang and Xieng Khuang, Borikhamxay and Xekong provinces are progressing well and expect to reach completion by end of this year.
The three projects are a shared investment between Electricite du Laos (EDL) and independent power producers (IPP), according to a recent report for the first six months of energy business operations by EDL.
The projects are Nam Ngum 5 in Luang Prabang and Xieng Khuang, Theun Hinboun Expansion in Borikhamxay and Xekaman 3 in Xekong.
“The Nam Ngum 5 construction is now 92.45 percent completed, Theun Hinboun Expansion is 99.14 percent and Xekaman 3 is 99.77 percent,” EDL Managing Director Mr Sisavath Thiravong reported at the recent biannual meeting in Vientiane.
In January this year, the stage of completion of the three projects was 80.6 percent for Nam Ngum 5, 96 percent for Theun Hinboun and 96.18 percent for Xekaman 3, according to the Ministry of Energy and Mines' Energy Business Department's website.
Nam Ngum 5 is a joint investment by Sinohydro Corporation from China and EDL, at a cost of about US$200 million, EDL holds 15 percent and Sinohydro 85 percent. The plant will have installed capacity of 120 megawatts (MW).
The Nam Ngum 5 developers signed the project concession agreement (CA) with the Lao government in April 2007 and the project will start supplying electricity to the EDL grid by the end of this year, for which the planned markets are Laos and Vietnam, the website mentioned.
Theun-Hinboun Hydropower Expansion is expected to cost more than 6.2 trillion kip (US$720 million). Sixty percent is owned by government shareholders through Electricite du Laos (EDL), while Nordic Hydro (Statkraft) and GMS Lao each hold a 20 percent stake.
The expansion aims to increase the supply of energy both for local distribution and export. It will also increase generator capacity from 220MW to 500MW. Upon completion of the dam, 440MW will be sold to Thailand with the remaining 60MW sold to EDL for local supply.
Xe Kaman 3 is the first Lao project to supply electricity to Electricity of Vietnam. The project cost is about US$311.7 million. Fifteen percent is owned by EDL, while the Vietnamese side holds 85 percent. The investors signed the CA with the government in April 2006.
It is located in Dakcheung district of Xekong and it will have an installed capacity of 250 MW that will generate about 1,000 GWh of electricity annually. About 90 percent of this will be exported to Vietnam, and 10 percent will be used locally.
The report noted that currently there are 15 hydropower plants that have an installed capacity of 2,519.70MW, including the EDL-Gen's 7 plants with an installed capacity of 381MW, EDL's 4 plants with 3.70MW. The remaining 4 plants are IPP.
“We hope that electricity generation will rise to 1,892.29 million kWh this year, including EDL's generation of 17.76 million kWh,” Mr Sisavath said.
In the first six months of this year EDL and IPP generated electricity totaling 813.86 million kWh. In the last six months of this year they hope to have energy generation of 1,078.43 million kWh
vientiane times
