A green energy subsidiary of Japanese conglomerate Marubeni has brought online a megawatt-scale battery storage demonstration project in Vietnam.
Marubeni Green Power Vietnam, a wholly owned subsidiary of Marubeni—one of Japan’s largest general trading ‘sōgō shōsha’ companies—partnered with Vietnamese counterpart VinGroup for the 1.8MW/3.7MWh lithium-ion (Li-ion) battery energy storage system (BESS) project.
The project went online late last year, and an official opening event was held on 5 December at the site, a resort location owned by VinPearl, a VinGroup subsidiary, on an island in the coastal city of Nha Trang, Khanh Hoa province.
VinGroup is, in turn, Vietnam’s largest trading conglomerate. Another of its subsidiaries, Vinfast Energy, which specialises in the electric vehicle (EV) space as well as stationary batteries, developed and manufactured the site’s battery-based energy storage system (ESS).
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While it is not Vietnam’s first megawatt-scale stationary BESS project to date, the companies involved claimed it is the first such project to leverage third-party investment in battery storage to reduce electricity costs for a private customer.
Resort operator VinPearl will pay no upfront cost for the equipment Marubeni owns. The Japanese company will arbitrage between higher and lower-cost time-of-use electricity rates as it charges and discharges the 3.7MWh battery capacity to reduce VinPearl’s power bills.
Marubeni will use the commercial demonstration project to evaluate the viability of the business model, while VinGroup hopes it will help VinPearl better assess how it can integrate more solar-generated renewable energy into its operations.
VinFast Energy’s domestically manufactured BESS features high energy density, liquid cooling technology and parent company VinGroup likewise aims for the project to showcase what the manufacturer can do.
The project follows a May 2023 Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between Marubeni and VinGroup’s energy storage arm, announced just a few days after Vietnam’s government approved a Master Plan to reform the country’s energy sector. The agreement was part of a wider collaboration between Marubeni and VinGroup within Vietnam’s energy transition economy.
In late 2022, VinGroup began construction of the country’s first lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery gigafactory through a joint venture (JV) with Chinese battery maker Gotion High-Tech.
The cell plant in Vung Anh Economic Zone, Ha Tinh, will supply components for both EV and BESS applications. Its planned annual production capacity is 5GWh and its investment cost was given at around US$275 million as construction began in November 2022.
BESS seen as key to unlocking solar integration and further deployment in Vietnam
Vietnam is Southeast Asia’s leading country for installed solar PV generation capacity, with over 18GW deployed as of 2023, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).
Nearly all of that solar is on rooftops, driven by a generous subsidy scheme for commercial and industrial (C&I) PV that saw around 10GW deployed in 2020 alone. However, as noted by a speaker at last year’s Energy Storage Summit Asia, hosted by our publisher Solar Media, mechanisms were not put in place to integrate that capacity onto the grid, leading to massive curtailment of solar resources.
Vietnam’s Eighth National Power Development Plan, published in 2023, also acknowledges that the country’s solar potential is an estimated 963GW of capacity, and the government has since made moves to provide offtake tariffs and better enable onsite self-consumption.
The plan also called for 300MW of battery storage deployment and 2,400MW of pumped hydro energy storage (PHES) by 2030.
State-owned public power company Vietnam Electricity (VE), is participating in a 50MW/50MWh grid-scale BESS pilot project which marks a first step towards that BESS goal.
Supported by parties including the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and non-profits Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI), Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet (GEAPP), the system will provide ancillary services including frequency regulation to the grid.
Additionally, a 15MW/7.5MWh BESS pilot project paired with a 50MW solar plant is in development, also in Khahn Hoa, by AMI AC Renewables, a joint venture (JV) formed by Philippines-headquartered power plant developer AC Energy (ACEN), and Vietnam’s AMI Renewables. The project received grant funding from the US Consulate General, and its equipment is being provided by US technology company Honeywell.
