Till January 5, 2021, Vietnam's installed rooftop solar PV capacity reached 9,583 MW with 101,996 installations, according to Electricity of Vietnam (EVN). This capacity fed 1,337,093 MWh to the grid till the end of the reporting period.
This means there was a gigantic boom in installations just before the year ended. Till the end of November 2020, a total of 74,281 rooftop solar systems were installed in the country with a combined capacity of 2,875.5 MW, according to the November 2020 Factsheet on Rooftop Solar Development by Vietnam Energy Partnership Group (VEPG).
As per VEPG, in the month of November 2020, 9,398 rooftop solar systems with a capacity of 850.6 MW were installed. Consider this: in the month of January 2020 Vietnam added 50.7 MW rooftop solar PV capacity taking the cumulative installed in the country to over 428 MW (see Vietnam Installed 50.7 MW Rooftop Solar In January 2020).
This also means that the country has far exceeded (and much ahead of schedule) its original target under Rooftop Solar Promotion Program (RTS Programme) 2019-2025 to install 100,000 rooftop solar systems or the equivalent of 1 GW by the end of 2025.
Rainer Brohm, Vietnam based Independent Renewable Energy Consultant and Technical Advisor with German Corporation for International Cooperation (GIZ), called it the 'most incredible end-of-year race ever seen in a rooftop solar market'. "Now MOIT needs to come up with a rooftop solar FIT extension quickly. Rooftop solar delivered double the power capacity than ground-mounted solar without causing any land-use conflicts or grid congestion. Seems a no brainer to me…," stated Brohm in a LinkedIn post.
In January 2020, EVN got government approval to continue a feed-in-tariff (FIT) rate of $0.0935 per kWh for the rooftop solar segment which was to be effective for systems installed till 2021 (see $0.0935/kWh Rooftop Solar FIT To Continue In Vietnam). Following this, in April 2020, the government approved solar FITs 2.0 for ground mounted, rooftop and floating solar projects, fixing $0.0838 per kWh as fixed tariff for 20 years for rooftop solar projects commissioned till December 31, 2020 under Decision 13/2020/QD-TTg (see Vietnam Releases New Solar Feed-in-Tariffs).
Vietnam's solar PV market proves what supportive regulatory infrastructure can do to encourage more and more people to opt for clean energy. And it also shows the effects of attractive incentives with hard deadlines. Back in 2017, the government Decision 11/2017/QD-TTg that fixed a long term tariff of $0.0935 per kWh for grid connected solar energy from large scale projects led to a spurt in installations that added up to over 4 GW till June 30, 2019 (see Vietnam: Over 4 GW PV Grid Connected By June 2019).