IN attempts to capture the rapid growth of the renewable energy (RE) market in Vietnam, Tenaga Nasional Bhd’s (TNB) wholly-owned subsidiary (TNB Renewables) will acquire a 39% stake from Sunseap Group in a project involving five rooftop solar plants from Singapore’s Sunseap Group.
The 21.6MW project secures the feed-in tariff (FiT) under the FiT2 scheme in Vietnam that promotes investments in RE sources through lucrative and above-market rate tariffs.
All of the five plants are under a 20-year Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) with state-owned utility company Vietnam Electricity, to supply clean energy to the country’s national grid.
Currently, Sunseap holds a 90% stake in the projects, which will be reduced to 51% upon completion (considering TNB Renewables), slated for the first quarter of this year.
With the acquisition, TNB is able to expand its international RE footprint into Southeast Asia, in addition to its existing portfolio of 2,732.3MW in Malaysia, 666MW across the UK, Turkey and India, which mainly comprise solar, wind and hydro energy generation assets.
TNB president and CEO Datuk Baharin Din said: “This acquisition will serve as a beachhead for TNB to establish a local presence in Vietnam and expand into the rapidly growing RE and utility market there, demonstrating our commitment in transforming TNB into a regional RE and utility player.”
Moving forward, TNB aims to grow its overall RE portfolio to 8,300MW by 2025, including in large hydro.
Sunseap on the other hand is one of the top solar rooftop companies in Southeast Asia and the largest solar company in Singapore with fully integrated solar business including presence in the energy retail segment.
It has a net capacity of 1.2GW across 11 markets and more than 200 assets in various stages of development. The latest 21.6MW rooftop solar project adds to Sunseap’s 168MW utility-scale solar farm it had built in Vietnam in 2019, and it is currently developing over 650MW of additional projects in Vietnam. – Mar 4, 2021
