Electricité du Laos (EDL) continues to expand power availability and raise access rates for consumers in Laos with its installment of 115 kWh of transmission lines for electricity transmission in the provinces of Savannakhet and Saravan.
Director General of Electricite du Laos, Mr Bounoum Sivanpheng spoke yesterday during opening of the project for commissioning of the Savannakhet- Saravan 115 kWh transmission line.
Mr Bounoum said the project was ready to play a part in helping Lao people in rural and remote areas increase access to electricity for consumption and in order to achieve connection rates of 90 percent of households around the country as per government policy.
Savannakhet and Saravan have installed transmission lines to a length of 227 kilometres with three additional transmission stations under loan of 4,173 million Yen from the Government of Japan.
The project, under construction since 2014, was completed earlier this month.
The upgraded infrastructure is expected to play an important role in transmitting power from central hydropower plants towards the south.
Presently, Laos has 51 stations to transmit electricity with total length of transmission lines at 6,510 kilometres.
The infrastructure is a significant factor in facilitating electricity exports, to spur social and economic development by value-added processing of the country’s primary products into manufactured goods.
Mr Bounoum pointed out if rural people can readily access electricity they will also be able to alter their productivity levels to further increase incomes.
By 2015, Laos had built 38 power plants at a total cost of more than 81.7 trillion kip (US$10 billion), with a total installed capacity of 6,265MW, according to Ministry of Energy and Mines’ Energy Policy and Planning Department.
These facilities can generate 33,315 million kWh of electricity a year. Some 20.4 percent of the power generated is consumed domestically while 79.6 percent is exported.
Under current arrangements the generated energy is for both local supply and export to Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia.
The majority of power exported goes to Thailand with the remainder going to Vietnam and Cambo dia.
The sector is also eyeing the potential development of an electricity grid linking countries between Laos and Singapore, with Thailand and Malaysia also set to benefit from the project.
Mr Bounoum said Laos will continue to push for the acceleration of energy integration under the Asean Power Grid (APG) to address the imbalance in the distribution of power-generating resources in the region.
APG aims to connect countries with surplus power generation capacity to those who face deficits, with an intention is to link up power lines in the 10 Asean nations by 2020.
Source: Vientiane Times
