VietNamNet Bridge - The significant increase in temperatures, a longer dry season and shorter rainy season, rising sea water levels, and stronger southwest and northeast monsoons in the future could be advantages for the development of renewable energy projects.

Mekong Delta has a monsoon climate, and is hot and humid, with two distinct seasons (rainy season which lasts five months and dry season which lasts seven months). 

The delta every year receives 2,200-2,500 sunshine hours on average, with an average solar radiation energy of 4.3-4.9 kWh per square meter.

These are advantages for the exploitation of light energy. It is estimated that every square meter of solar panels can help generate 5 KWh of electricity every day, according to Le Anh Tuan from the Can Tho University’s Climate Change Research Institute.

The light source is stable with more than 90 percent of days in a year getting enough sunlight to operate solar panels.

The significant increase in temperatures, a longer dry season and shorter rainy season, rising sea water levels, and stronger southwest and northeast monsoons in the future could be advantages for the development of renewable energy projects.

Tuan, in an article on Thoi Bao Kinh Te Sai Gon, wrote that thevMekong Delta is a low and flat peninsula, bordering the sea in the east. In the south and southwest, it borders the coastline and islands with the total length of approximately 700 kilometers, and the exclusive economic zone of 360,000 square kilometers, which is 10 times larger than the domestic mainland.

With such favorable terms and strong coastal winds, about 5.5-6 meters per second at a height of 80 meters (the height of wind power poles currently installed in Bac Lieu province), the coastal wind energy could reach between 1200 and 1500 MW.

“Wave energy, tidal energy, biomass energy are all abundant in thevMekong Delta, but they have not been fully exploited,” Tuan said.

The mathematical models predicting climate change in accordance with different scenarios on greenhouse gas emissions designed by independent Vietnamese and foreign scientists all concluded that solar radiation and air temperature would increase by 2oC in two to three decades.

The PRECIS model for the Mekong Delta predicted that the sunny season would last two weeks longer, which means that the dry season would last 7.5 months instead of 7 months, while the number of days with high temperatures of over 35oC would rise from 150-180 to 180-210 each year. 

This, according to Tuan, could have adverse effects on agricultural production and fisheries, but would be good for solar energy exploitation, which generates electricity at lower cost. 

As the wind speed of months in 2020-2050 would increase by 10-20 percent, wind power plants, onshore and offshore, could prove useful. 


Kim Chi