Potential and Barriers to the Evolution of Rooftop Solar in Central VietNam

Today, solar power is considered an alternative energy resource due to the global warming crisis results from the pollution of fossil fuels. In Vietnam, the solar photovoltaic rooftop has been promoted by the government to install in the private house since the solar energy potential is very promising, especially the central Vietnam. This decision opens an interesting opportunity to sell back redundancy energies to the power companies. However, this option is a challenge for power companies managing the distribution networks since the power sources move from big generators to distributed generators. Therefore, this paper aims to investigate the potential of solar energy in central Vietnam from two points of view: (i) solar irradiance, (ii) decisions of the Vietnam Government. Here, the state-of-the-art solar rooftop of two big cities in central Vietnam, Danang and Hue city, is presented. Finally, the paper also provides challenges and solutions to mitigate the impact of solar rooftop on the technical constraints of the distribution network.