It its efforts to ensure power supply for households and businesses in Da Nang during the 2024 hot season, the power industry is adopting solutions to operation and troubleshooting in a synchronous way in a bid to ensure safe, stable and continuous power supply in the city.

The power industry synchronously deploys solutions to ensure power supply in the hot season in the city. Photo: TRAN TRUC

According to the Da Nang Power Company (PC Da Nang), between April and August, commercial energy usage in the city is expected to increase by over 12%-13% compared to the same period last year. In particular, energy usage of the commercial, and hospitality sectors will go up by over 16% over the same period last year.

On the other hand, energy usage of households and businesses is expected to reach 664 MW per day, up 8% year on year.

Till date, PC Da Nang has created many plans in 2024 for operating the power distribution system, ensuring power supply during the dry season, stopping or reducing emergency power supply when the national power system lacks energy or in case of extreme emergency, supplying power for important customers, water supply plants, irrigation pump stations, and drought-proof water pump stations for various purposes such as mitigating natural disasters, dealing with drought, water shortage and saltwater intrusion in the city.

The plans are developed in a detailed and specific manner while effective solutions will be adopted to ensure stable operation of the power system, power system security, as well as make sure that setting up thermal discharge areas do not affect political activities, national defense and security, along with healthcare service. Furthermore, heed is paid to ensuring power supply for important customers who have been approved by the municipal government.

Non-commercial voluntary load reduction agreement has been signed between PC Da Nang and 311 customers with energy usage of 1 million kWh per year or above. By participating in this program and reducing peak demand, these customers are teaming up to conserve energy, and reducing the need for more power generation.

Furthermore, load shifting agreement has also been signed between PC Da Nang and 153 manufacturing companies with energy usage of 1 million kWh per year or above. Accordingly, between April and July, they committed to adjust their energy consumption pattern with estimated 25 MW per month on average. A combined total of 22.7 million kWh of energy have been saved over the first 4 months of the year by Da Nang, accounting for 2.2% of the city’s total commercial electricity, a rise of 27.2% compared with the corresponding period last year.

The idea of load shifting is to adjust your energy consumption pattern. Instead of using energy during peak hours when everyone else is also trying to power up, you will shift their consumption to off-peak hours when demand is lowest. By doing so, you can help balance the energy grid and prevent overloads during peak hours. Not only does load shifting help balance the power system, but it also makes it more resilient to unexpected events such as natural disasters, extreme weather conditions, and equipment failures.

Specifically, the Thanh Khe District Electricity Distribution Company is located in Da Nang’s inner areas where many important customers are concentrated, including the Airport Water Supply Plant, the airport, and and a large number of households. Since the start of the year, the company has created a plan to improve the district’s electric power grid in an effort to ensure adequate availability of power in the locality.

Heed has been paid to adopting effective solutions to avoid overloading in low-voltage and medium-voltage networks during the hot weather. Importance has been attached to educating the general public to use electricity economically and effectively. Specifically, voluntary load reduction and load shifting agreements have been signed between the Thanh Khe District Electricity Distribution Company and 13 customers with energy usage of over 1 million kWh per year while energy-saving agreement has been signed between the company and 4,013 customers. Special attention has been paid to accelerating key installation and repair projects such as installing more than 12km of twisted cables, replacing 5,000m of damaged twisted cables and 31 unsafe electrical cabinets with new ones.

PC Da Nang Deputy Director Nguyen Dinh Tuan said that in the coming time, the company will continue to implement investment projects for upgrading and renovating the city's electric power grid. In particular, focus will be on completing such key projects as installing the 22 kV overhead lines, electric power grids, as well as ensuring N-1 criteria in order to improve power availability for industrial parks, hi-tech park, and dedicated IT park. Heed will be paid to improving power availability, and preventing overload in low-voltage and medium-voltage networks, plus transformer stations in the city. Importance will be attached to automating the city’s power distribution system in the 2024-2025 period, relocating and renovating the city’s electric power grid in an attempt to pay the way for urban embellishment plan as per request of the municipal government.

Special attention will also paid to working with relevant local agencies to ensure adequate availability of power in the city, thereby contributing to driving the city’s socio-economic development.

Reporting by TRAN TRUC – Translating by H.L, P.TRA