By Cheang Sokha,
Phnom Penh Post
Posted at www.newsmekong.org
PHNOM PENH - The Cambodian capital Phnom Penh, now dependent for electricity on costly oil-driven generators, will get its electricity supply from Vietnam by 2008 as part of a national plan that will see eastern and southern provinces connected to Thailand’s, a government official has told the ‘Phnom Penh Post’.
Electricity sells at between 600 and 2,000 riel per kilowatt-hour in Cambodia, among the highest prices in the world. Buying power from its neighbouring countries should reduce the price to as low as 250 riel per kWh.
On Nov. 27, 2006 Prime Minister Hun Sen invited foreign investors, especially China, to help develop hydroelectric power generation in Cambodia, to further diversify the power supply away from costly gasoline and diesel generation.
But Cambodia’s electricity supply remains so undeveloped that even after the development of hydroelectric power and linking with the Thai and Vietnamese electrical grids, the government envisages that by 2030 only 70 percent of households in this country of 14.8 million will have power.
From Vietnam
Ith Praing, secretary of state at the Ministry of Industry, Mines and Energy (MIME), said the ministry is inviting companies to bid to install poles and a 220-kilovolt transmission line from Vietnam to Phnom Penh through Takeo province. In the first two or three years of operation, Vietnam will supply 80 megawatts of power, then this will rise to 200 MW.
“Power imported from Vietnam and Thailand is much cheaper than power generated in Cambodia,” Praing said, “When the transmission line is connected. it will help us to reduce the use of fuel generators.”
Praing said Cambodia has had an intergovernmental agreement with Vietnam on power supply since 1999. Since 2002, Krek and Memot districts of Kampong Cham province, Kampong Ror and Kampong Trach district of Kampot have been connected to Vietnam’s electricity grid.
Yim Viseth, an official at the electricity regulation department of the Electricity Authority of Cambodia (EAC), confirmed that the agreement between Cambodia and Vietnam to connect Phnom Penh with Vietnam’s electricity grid through Takeo province is complete and the search is on for a company to construct poles and transmission lines.
“I hope the connecting process will start in 2008,” Viseth said, “We had to wait for approval from the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank.” The two banks are lending 55 million dollars toward the project.
Viseth said that as well as providing electricity from Vietnam across Takeo straight to Phnom Penh, the plan included building a substation in Takeo to supply electricity to people living within 40 km. The supply authority is also considering a link from Vietnam to Kep municipality.
Lam Du Son, deputy director of Electricity of Vietnam (EVN), said EVN would provide electricity to Cambodia at two levels: low and medium voltage (22 kV to 35 kV) for border areas such as Kampong Cham, Svay Rieng, Koh Thom district of Kandal, Kampot and Kratie, and the 220 kV high voltage line straight to Phnom Penh.
Du Son said EVN had built a high-voltage line from Chau Doc to the border in February 2006, so that it remained only for Cambodia to build the 112 km of transmission lines from the border to Phnom Penh, along with the Takeo substation.
“EVN is also studying the feasibility of a 110kV line to Kampong Cham and is considering connections to Kirivong of Takeo and the Kh’am Samnor and Korh Roka border gates,” Du Son said.
“All electricity supplied to Cambodia is under the control of EVN and based on requests from the Cambodian side.”
A Vietnamese Embassy official in Phnom Penh, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told the ‘Post’ that Vietnam was signing up to supply electricity to large parts of Cambodia even though some remote parts of Vietnam were still without electricity.
Through Thailand
Meanwhile, transmission lines are being built from the Thai border to three northwestern provinces, though not in time to supply Siem Reap with electricity promised for the November opening of the Angkor-Gyeongju World Culture Expo, a festival designed to highlight the cultures of the heritage sites of Angkor in Cambodia and Gyeonju in South Korea. (South Koreans make up nearly a third of tourist arrivals in Angkor.)
MIME’s Praing said the government had signed an agreement with Thailand’s privately owned Electricity Generating Company to build 115 kV lines to supply 85 MW of power to Bantey Meanchey, Siem Reap and Battambang provinces. The project is estimated to cost approximately 20 million dollars and will run for 25 years under a build-operate-transfer agreement.
He said poles and transmission lines from Poipet to Siem Reap had been installed but the power could not be provided in time for the Angkor-Gyeongju exhibition, which runs from Nov. 21, 2006 to Jan. 9, 2007.
Praing said that since 2000, Koh Kong, Poipet and some districts of Battambang province have been connected to Thailand’s electricity grid on a low, 22 kV voltage.
On sum, the governor of Banteay Meanchey province, said some districts along the Thai border were using Thai electricity, in particular at Poipet that lies just across the Thai tow of Aranyaprathet, where local business tycoon Senator Kok An signed up to buy electricity from Thailand several years ago. Sisophon is supplied with EDC electricity, but it is insufficient to meet demand.
“We still face electricity shortages,” Sum said, “Some districts use private electricity, but it is expensive.”
Sum said there have been problems building the high-voltage power line from Thailand to Siem Reap, including the fact that overweight trucks bringing the equipment had damaged the road, thus slowing down the project.
But Cheam Kosen, director of Siem Reap’s EDC branch operation, told the ‘Post’ that about 95 percent of poles and the transmission lines connecting Poipet to Siem Reap have already been completed and that the town would be online in early 2007.
“We have set up a 22 kV substation in Pouk district so the people living along the transmission line will have access to the power,” Kosen said. He said Siem Reap was depending on 15 megawatts produced by a black-oil-and-diesel generator, supplying roughly 13,000 households at 870 riel per kWh.
“In 2007, Siem Reap’s EDC will expand the transmission line to three major locations in Siem Reap to meet the demand (for electricity), which grows by 20 percent annually,” Kosen said.
Voeun Phally, 25, who lives in Teuk Vel commune in Pouk district just 8 km from Siem Reap town, was excited to see electricity poles installed in front of her wooden house. Her family had never had access to the state or private electricity, and depended on a battery for lighting.
“I’m very happy and expect to receive electricity during the Khmer New Year,” Phally said. “My father will buy a karaoke machine and I will have a chance to sing songs. We do not think about the price, we need electricity.”
And then, China
During Prime Minister Hun Sen’s visit to China in late October, China promised to build hydroelectric dams at four places in Pursat province.
China is already engaged in the Kamchay hydropower dam above Kampot, which is expected to supply 190 MW by 2010.
On Nov. 27, Hun Sen told 1,000 students at a graduation ceremony at the Royal University of Law and Economics that his government had urged foreign investors, especially those from China, to invest in the hydroelectric sector to help bring down the price of electricity.
“I requested the Chinese Ambassador here to attract her country’s companies to invest in hydroelectric power generation in Cambodia,” he said, according to Xinhua news agency.
On Oct. 23, the Manila-based Asian Development Bank approved a further 20 million dollar loan for a second 230 Kv power transmission line from Vietnam, running through Kampot to Sihanouville. The Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) is providing a loan of more than 22 million dollars towards the project.
The project will facilitate the reduction in electricity tariffs in Sihanoukville to between 250 and 350 riel per kWh, and will allow rural households living along the transmission line corridor to have access to reliable and lower-cost electricity from the grid.
“The present mode of power generation is expensive and inefficient, as it does not achieve economies of scale and cannot meet growing demand,” said Tianhua Luo, an ADB energy specialist, on Oct. 23.
Praing said the ADB and JBIC have completed the feasibility study of the Kampot-Sihanoukville project. It will start in mid 2007 and be complete at the end of 2010.
Electricite du Cambodge (EDC) supplies electricity only in Phnom Penh and major provincial towns. Elsewhere, in 2003, there were between 600 and 1,000 small independent electricity providers supplying electricity to about 120,000 households for an average of four hours per day. But the electricity is expensive, reflecting the cost of petrol and diesel generators, and the poor economies of scale.
Praing said only 17 percent of the total population, and 85 percent of residences in Phnom Penh, have electricity now. The government plans that by 2020, all villages will be connected to electricity and by the 2030, at least 70 percent of households will have power.
“This target is to depend on the participation of the private sector to produce and supply power,” Praing said, “You can see the power usage increasing everyday. In Phnom Penh along, the increase is between 25 and 30 percent annually.”
Praing said that in Phnom Penh, EDC alone could not produce enough power to meet demand, so it was buying 45 MW each from two private companies, Cambodia Electricity Private (CEP) and Khmer Electric Power (Kep), and 30 MW from a Malaysian company called Cambodia Utility Power Ltd.
Praing said two hydroelectric dams are going to be built on the Sre Pok and Se San rivers in Rattanakiri and Stung Treng, and they should begin producing power between 2016 or 2020, which would be supplied to Mekong countries. “The dams will provide thousands of megawatts,” he said.
The ‘Post’ has previously reported that these dams will be built by Vietnam, which would receive the electricity, generate it and sell it back to Cambodia.
Laek Housan, chief of Svay Rieng industry, mines and energy office, said that three districts of the province had been connected to electricity from Vietnam since 2005, and that two other districts will be connected in 2007. “At the moment, about 15 percent of families in the province have access to electricity and by 2015, I hope 100 percent of families will have power,” Housan said. (END/IM/CS/JS/1206)
(*Cheang Sophea wrote this article under the Imaging Our Mekong programme, an annual media fellowship implemented by IPS Asia-Pacific and Probe Media Foundation Inc, with the support of the Rockefeller Foundation.)
Electricity sells at between 600 and 2,000 riel per kilowatt-hour in Cambodia, among the highest prices in the world. Buying power from its neighbouring countries should reduce the price to as low as 250 riel per kWh.
On Nov. 27, 2006 Prime Minister Hun Sen invited foreign investors, especially China, to help develop hydroelectric power generation in Cambodia, to further diversify the power supply away from costly gasoline and diesel generation.
But Cambodia’s electricity supply remains so undeveloped that even after the development of hydroelectric power and linking with the Thai and Vietnamese electrical grids, the government envisages that by 2030 only 70 percent of households in this country of 14.8 million will have power.
From Vietnam
Ith Praing, secretary of state at the Ministry of Industry, Mines and Energy (MIME), said the ministry is inviting companies to bid to install poles and a 220-kilovolt transmission line from Vietnam to Phnom Penh through Takeo province. In the first two or three years of operation, Vietnam will supply 80 megawatts of power, then this will rise to 200 MW.
“Power imported from Vietnam and Thailand is much cheaper than power generated in Cambodia,” Praing said, “When the transmission line is connected. it will help us to reduce the use of fuel generators.”
Praing said Cambodia has had an intergovernmental agreement with Vietnam on power supply since 1999. Since 2002, Krek and Memot districts of Kampong Cham province, Kampong Ror and Kampong Trach district of Kampot have been connected to Vietnam’s electricity grid.
Yim Viseth, an official at the electricity regulation department of the Electricity Authority of Cambodia (EAC), confirmed that the agreement between Cambodia and Vietnam to connect Phnom Penh with Vietnam’s electricity grid through Takeo province is complete and the search is on for a company to construct poles and transmission lines.
“I hope the connecting process will start in 2008,” Viseth said, “We had to wait for approval from the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank.” The two banks are lending 55 million dollars toward the project.
Viseth said that as well as providing electricity from Vietnam across Takeo straight to Phnom Penh, the plan included building a substation in Takeo to supply electricity to people living within 40 km. The supply authority is also considering a link from Vietnam to Kep municipality.
Lam Du Son, deputy director of Electricity of Vietnam (EVN), said EVN would provide electricity to Cambodia at two levels: low and medium voltage (22 kV to 35 kV) for border areas such as Kampong Cham, Svay Rieng, Koh Thom district of Kandal, Kampot and Kratie, and the 220 kV high voltage line straight to Phnom Penh.
Du Son said EVN had built a high-voltage line from Chau Doc to the border in February 2006, so that it remained only for Cambodia to build the 112 km of transmission lines from the border to Phnom Penh, along with the Takeo substation.
“EVN is also studying the feasibility of a 110kV line to Kampong Cham and is considering connections to Kirivong of Takeo and the Kh’am Samnor and Korh Roka border gates,” Du Son said.
“All electricity supplied to Cambodia is under the control of EVN and based on requests from the Cambodian side.”
A Vietnamese Embassy official in Phnom Penh, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told the ‘Post’ that Vietnam was signing up to supply electricity to large parts of Cambodia even though some remote parts of Vietnam were still without electricity.
Through Thailand
Meanwhile, transmission lines are being built from the Thai border to three northwestern provinces, though not in time to supply Siem Reap with electricity promised for the November opening of the Angkor-Gyeongju World Culture Expo, a festival designed to highlight the cultures of the heritage sites of Angkor in Cambodia and Gyeonju in South Korea. (South Koreans make up nearly a third of tourist arrivals in Angkor.)
MIME’s Praing said the government had signed an agreement with Thailand’s privately owned Electricity Generating Company to build 115 kV lines to supply 85 MW of power to Bantey Meanchey, Siem Reap and Battambang provinces. The project is estimated to cost approximately 20 million dollars and will run for 25 years under a build-operate-transfer agreement.
He said poles and transmission lines from Poipet to Siem Reap had been installed but the power could not be provided in time for the Angkor-Gyeongju exhibition, which runs from Nov. 21, 2006 to Jan. 9, 2007.
Praing said that since 2000, Koh Kong, Poipet and some districts of Battambang province have been connected to Thailand’s electricity grid on a low, 22 kV voltage.
On sum, the governor of Banteay Meanchey province, said some districts along the Thai border were using Thai electricity, in particular at Poipet that lies just across the Thai tow of Aranyaprathet, where local business tycoon Senator Kok An signed up to buy electricity from Thailand several years ago. Sisophon is supplied with EDC electricity, but it is insufficient to meet demand.
“We still face electricity shortages,” Sum said, “Some districts use private electricity, but it is expensive.”
Sum said there have been problems building the high-voltage power line from Thailand to Siem Reap, including the fact that overweight trucks bringing the equipment had damaged the road, thus slowing down the project.
But Cheam Kosen, director of Siem Reap’s EDC branch operation, told the ‘Post’ that about 95 percent of poles and the transmission lines connecting Poipet to Siem Reap have already been completed and that the town would be online in early 2007.
“We have set up a 22 kV substation in Pouk district so the people living along the transmission line will have access to the power,” Kosen said. He said Siem Reap was depending on 15 megawatts produced by a black-oil-and-diesel generator, supplying roughly 13,000 households at 870 riel per kWh.
“In 2007, Siem Reap’s EDC will expand the transmission line to three major locations in Siem Reap to meet the demand (for electricity), which grows by 20 percent annually,” Kosen said.
Voeun Phally, 25, who lives in Teuk Vel commune in Pouk district just 8 km from Siem Reap town, was excited to see electricity poles installed in front of her wooden house. Her family had never had access to the state or private electricity, and depended on a battery for lighting.
“I’m very happy and expect to receive electricity during the Khmer New Year,” Phally said. “My father will buy a karaoke machine and I will have a chance to sing songs. We do not think about the price, we need electricity.”
And then, China
During Prime Minister Hun Sen’s visit to China in late October, China promised to build hydroelectric dams at four places in Pursat province.
China is already engaged in the Kamchay hydropower dam above Kampot, which is expected to supply 190 MW by 2010.
On Nov. 27, Hun Sen told 1,000 students at a graduation ceremony at the Royal University of Law and Economics that his government had urged foreign investors, especially those from China, to invest in the hydroelectric sector to help bring down the price of electricity.
“I requested the Chinese Ambassador here to attract her country’s companies to invest in hydroelectric power generation in Cambodia,” he said, according to Xinhua news agency.
On Oct. 23, the Manila-based Asian Development Bank approved a further 20 million dollar loan for a second 230 Kv power transmission line from Vietnam, running through Kampot to Sihanouville. The Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) is providing a loan of more than 22 million dollars towards the project.
The project will facilitate the reduction in electricity tariffs in Sihanoukville to between 250 and 350 riel per kWh, and will allow rural households living along the transmission line corridor to have access to reliable and lower-cost electricity from the grid.
“The present mode of power generation is expensive and inefficient, as it does not achieve economies of scale and cannot meet growing demand,” said Tianhua Luo, an ADB energy specialist, on Oct. 23.
Praing said the ADB and JBIC have completed the feasibility study of the Kampot-Sihanoukville project. It will start in mid 2007 and be complete at the end of 2010.
Electricite du Cambodge (EDC) supplies electricity only in Phnom Penh and major provincial towns. Elsewhere, in 2003, there were between 600 and 1,000 small independent electricity providers supplying electricity to about 120,000 households for an average of four hours per day. But the electricity is expensive, reflecting the cost of petrol and diesel generators, and the poor economies of scale.
Praing said only 17 percent of the total population, and 85 percent of residences in Phnom Penh, have electricity now. The government plans that by 2020, all villages will be connected to electricity and by the 2030, at least 70 percent of households will have power.
“This target is to depend on the participation of the private sector to produce and supply power,” Praing said, “You can see the power usage increasing everyday. In Phnom Penh along, the increase is between 25 and 30 percent annually.”
Praing said that in Phnom Penh, EDC alone could not produce enough power to meet demand, so it was buying 45 MW each from two private companies, Cambodia Electricity Private (CEP) and Khmer Electric Power (Kep), and 30 MW from a Malaysian company called Cambodia Utility Power Ltd.
Praing said two hydroelectric dams are going to be built on the Sre Pok and Se San rivers in Rattanakiri and Stung Treng, and they should begin producing power between 2016 or 2020, which would be supplied to Mekong countries. “The dams will provide thousands of megawatts,” he said.
The ‘Post’ has previously reported that these dams will be built by Vietnam, which would receive the electricity, generate it and sell it back to Cambodia.
Laek Housan, chief of Svay Rieng industry, mines and energy office, said that three districts of the province had been connected to electricity from Vietnam since 2005, and that two other districts will be connected in 2007. “At the moment, about 15 percent of families in the province have access to electricity and by 2015, I hope 100 percent of families will have power,” Housan said. (END/IM/CS/JS/1206)
(*Cheang Sophea wrote this article under the Imaging Our Mekong programme, an annual media fellowship implemented by IPS Asia-Pacific and Probe Media Foundation Inc, with the support of the Rockefeller Foundation.)
10 comments:
What does anyone expect when a blind and uneducated man like Hun Sen rules the country?
Wrong, you are the one who opposed
all of the hydropowered electric
plants remember?
dude, don't mind mi cpp's slut 1:17PM. let her crazy with ah hun k'vak.
Yeah, and stay out of ah hun
k'vak's country, you retard.
Why do you folks keep insulting each other? That doesn't help anybody, does it? The fact is that Cambodia cannot produce enough electricity, and the little it can produce is too expensive. So, consequently it turns to foreign countries that have the know-how and the means. The same happens all over the world, whether it's Europe with Russian gas, or the U. S. with oil. Nothing wrong with that. A country does not give up its independence or freedom by buying abroad.
You go, mate!!!
Yeahh.. another scapegote. Why Cambodia cannot have apower plant and cannot have electricity BECAUSE there're too many criminals are in charge IDIOT.
Wrong, it is because traitor like
you oppose it. Don't tell me
that you forgot about article
that is posted recently here, fool.
To Moi28:
For someone who claims to have been born and raised in the U. S. your comments and language sometimes make you appear as a person without a lot of education, e. g. the one above. If you had been in Cambodia in the 1980s - after the VN troops left, you would have seen how she went to waste because of poor leadership and further exploitation by their Communist 'allies'. When the UN sponsored elections rolled around, the country was in ruins. If I remember correctly, the Japanese built the first power plant with a substantial output. Cambodia simply didn't have any money nor the expertise to build plants on their own. And this continues until today when more than 60% of the national budget are financed by foreign aid coming from Japan, the U.S., the EU, etc. And Cambodia still lacks the educated manpower to tackle such enormous task. There simply does not exist an educated elite in this country yet. Why, we previously talked about this in different posts. I think it would be worthwhile for you visiting the country of your parents.
You go, Mate!!!
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