Till the end of December 2019, Vietnam's total installed rooftop solar capacity reached 378 MW in the form of 22,232 systems deployed that within the month of December alone generated 21,528 MWh of solar power.
These statistics appear in the first factsheet of the Vietnam Energy Partnership Group (VEPG) on Vietnam's rooftop solar market. The VEPG, a partnership entity between the Government of Vietnam and its international development partners, has summarized monthly rooftop solar power data from the Electricity of Vietnam (EVN) in this factsheet.
Under the country's Rooftop Solar Promotion Program for 2019-2025 under the Ministry of Industry and Trade's (MOIT) Decision 2023/QD-BCT, Vietnam targets 1 GW of rooftop solar capacity in the form of 100,000 rooftop solar systems by the end of 2025.
According to the data, of the total installed systems, most systems are reported in the residential sector, followed by commercial, industrial and finally the government sector. However, the highest installed capacity is seen in the industrial segment thanks to larger system sizes that flaunt an average of around 150 kW; for the residential segment it is 6.5 kW.
In terms of geographical spread, the highest total installed capacity by industrial customer is reported in Ninh Thuan with 33.02 MW, by commercial customers in Dak Lak province with 4.71 MW, and by residential customers in Dong Nai with 6.57 MW.
To encourage further deployment of rooftop solar power, Vietnam has decided to continue with a feed-in tariff level of $0.0935 per kWh for this segment for systems installed till 2021, even though the government has proposed to bring it down for large-scale solar projects commissioned till December 2021 to $0.0709/kWh.
Investment manager VinaCapital sees Vietnam having potential to install over 4 GW of rooftop solar in the country by 2030 with the C&I segment claiming 95% market share (see Over 4 GW Rooftop Solar Potential For Vietnam). In January 2020, a news report by Vietnam News referred to EVN data to say that the country's installed rooftop solar power capacity is expected to hit the 2 GW milestone by the end of 2020.
Recently, law firm Baker McKenzie said MOIT is considering up to 1 GW of renewable energy power supply to the private sector under a corporate PPA pilot (see Vietnam Mulling Pilot For Corporate Power Purchasers).