Power Cuts Phu My Hung

Power cuts are like sunshine in Vietnam - you have or you don't. It's a quite common/regular and nasty occurrence. There is only one option; Getting used to it.

During the last two years, we had almost none, prior at least every second day, as there was apparently a shortage of power.

Than, in August sometimes, a news paper article saying something like: No more power cuts permitted by the prime minister and as from this day, we had virtually no more power outages.

Willwall,
I too have been living in the area for around 5 years and these power cuts are not unusual. They're usually due to construction and infrastructure upgrades in our area. I have a lot of construction going on around where I live, and am surprised there have not been more power cuts. There are always advance notifications posted in my building at least the day before. Our power was off from 8am to 1pm yesterday. We knew about it beforehand, and planned to be out of the house during that time. Maybe your area does not keep you informed as well as where I am.

When a power cut starts around 08.00H they are scheduled and usually last the day ... or at least until dark.

Unscheduled power cuts last around an hour.

Scheduled power cuts are shown on the Electricity of Vietnam (EVN) in Ho Chi Minh City (EVN HCMC) web site. At least they are fair, moving the power outages around ... especially when it's PMH! How more fair could they be?

Guess your building doesn't have a generator ... a question to ask when renting an apartment!

According to EVN HCMC statistics, the whole city saved 391.61 million kWh of electricity in 2011, which accounted for 2.6% of the city's commercial electricity production output in the same year, 2.4 times the target set by the EVN and up 75.7% from 2010. The 'Families Saving Electricity' campaign attracted 811,306 households that accounted for 50% of power users in the city and saved 86.8 million kWh of electricity.

Did you know there is a 'Families Saving Electricity' campaign held annually here in TP HCM? It presents VND500,000 to each of the 250 best power saving households and VND200,000 to each of 10,000 notable power saving households.

In DakLak, where we have the water, generators and the grid control centre, we rarely have power cuts! (DakLak is where the 500KVolt line moves the power to HCMC.

The VN power network is impressive, now, with a 500KV (among the highest voltages used world wide) and connects Son La Province, in the north, to Phu My station in Ba Ria-Vung Tau Province. It's total 500KV length is now over 3,980 kilometres!

Full details: < http://www.nldc.evn.vn/Upload/NewsGroup … 011091556.pdf >.

EVN is one of VietNam's greatest government success stories.

Surely, I have saved 2 years ago a lot on power bills (five month with an average of of not less than 72 hours per week without power)- as the meters did show actually up to four times than during the month with permanent power (the power company than wrote those bills off).However, those savings + a bit extra went to a huge Diesel Power aggregate.
Two years ago, our power cuts did start off with 1 hour, up to one day, increasing up to 6,5 days a week ( we lived quite a bit outside from the city). A couple of month after our first power cut, it started also to get regular in the city - where every 2 days the power was turned off during day and many areas also again at night.
As from the end of this no-power cycle, virtually no more power cuts (apart from the odd 20 minutes and few single hours in between, no more power cuts, since over 2 years now.

At his time, I do not really care power or not - the Aggregate is still on standby and will remain like this until the next time needed.

Take it, like it comes.