Vietnam Electricity rebuts information Foxconn urged to 'voluntarily cut power use'

State utility Vietnam Electricity (EVN) has rejected a Reuters article which quoted two sources as saying that Vietnamese authorities have called on Apple supplier Foxconn to "voluntarily cut power use by 30% at its assembly plants in the north of the country".

Northern Vietnam saw electricity outages in summer last year, and there are concerns that this might happen again this year.

In a Wednesday statement, EVN said that since late 2023 and early 2024, it has been preparing for different scenarios and has so far this year ensured electricity supply. "EVN does not have any plans and does not ask customers to refrain from power use," it added.

In the remaining months of 2024, EVN will keep updating the power demand, and has made preparations to ensure sufficient electricity to facilitate economic growth and the daily lives of citizens, the power giant affirmed.

The utility called on all customers to use electricity economically and efficiently per the Prime Minister’s Directive 20/CT-TTg dated June 8, 2023.

In its article published on Tuesday, Reuters wrote: "The request for energy-saving measures, which two other industry sources said was sent to multiple manufacturers, is precautionary and aimed at averting a repeat of last summer when power shortage led to over a billion dollars in lost output."

“The request to Foxconn was "an encouragement", not a requirement and has not had any impact on production, one of the people said," the news wire service added.

In April, the output of Vietnam’s electricity system reached 26.82 billion kWh, up 14.1% year-on-year. In the first four months of this year, the figure was 96.16 billion kWh, up 12.4% year-on-year.

Regarding sources, coal-fired power accounted for the biggest portion of 56.89 billion kWh, or 59.2% of the total; followed by renewable energy with 14.55 billion kWh, or 15.1% (solar power with 9.26 billion kWh and wind energy with 4.78 billion kWh); hydropower with 14.41 billion kWh, or 15%; and gas-fired power with 8.52 billion kWh, or 8.9%. The imported power was 1.56 billion kWh, or 1.6%.

The maximum capacity reached a new height of 47,670 MW on April 27, while the daily consumption had a new peak of 993 billion kWh on April 26, EVN said.