Power purchases exceed expectations

Power purchases exceed expectations

Electricite du Laos (EDL) says this year's energy purchases, including imports and supplies from local generators, will be much larger than initial expectations indicated.

“We expect to buy 3,933.26 million kWh of electricity with revenue of US$116.49 million,” the EDL Managing Director Mr Sisavath Thiravong reported at a recent meeting in Vientiane.

“This is a 102.72 percent increase from the initial target,” Mr Sisavath said.

EDL believes the annual power purchasing will be higher than expected because of increased business in the first six months of this year.

It reported at the meeting that it purchased 1,899.53 million kWh at a cost of US$57.98 million in the first six months of this year. “This was 105.03 percent higher than the projections,” Mr Sisavath said.

“Electricity purchases will rise to about 2,000 million kWh, which will be worth around US$58 million or 446 billion kip, in the last six months of the year.”

The report for the first six months noted that currently there are 15 hydropower plants that have a total installed capacity of 2,519.70 megawatts (MW), including EDL-Gen's 7 plants with an installed capacity of 381M and state owned EDL's 4 plants with 3.70MW. The remaining 4 plants are independent power producers (IPP).

In the first six months of this year EDL and the independent power producers were able to generate electricity totaling 813.86 million kWh. In the last six months of this year they hope to generate 1,078.43 million kWh of electricity.

vietiane times