HCM City (VNS/VNA) – The HCM City ElectricityCorporation encourages households to install rooftop solar panels and now thereare 475 of them connected to its grid with a total capacity of nearly 5.3MW.

Due to its climate and population, HCM City is the biggestelectricity consumer in Vietnam, Pham Quoc Bao, deputy general director of thecorporation, was quoted as saying by the Government portal.

In the first half of this year demand increased by 7 percentyear-on-year, he said.

The corporation has exhorted consumers to save electricity byturning off all unnecessary devices.

To prevent overloading the grid, it has warned them not touse many devices at the same time, especially during peak hours.

In 2016 –17, the city saved 800 million kWh, equivalent to 1.5trillion VND (66.6 million USD) under an electricity saving programme.

The corporation is also persuading residents to install anduse solar energy.

“It is renewable, eternal, and environmental friendlyenergy,” Bao added.

“Solar energy does not create noise or smoke, costs nothing to generate andmaintenance costs little. Besides, people can sell their surplus solarenergy.”

The corporation therefore connects consumers’ solar energysystems with the electrical grid and installs two-way meters for free.

With these meters, electricity company staff can measure boththe electricity that consumers draw from the grid and the power they sell to it.

It pays them 2,000 VND (9.35 cent) per kWh.

The corporation has also set up solar panels at its 16 subsidiaries’headquarters, and plans to expand it by installing them at all its offices.

It has urged the Ministries of Industry and Trade and Financeto create a legal framework for signing electricity buying contracts withcustomers.

It has asked the city People’s Committee to instructindustrial parks, processing zones, high-tech parks, schools, hospitals, andall State offices to install solar panels.-VNS/VNA