Power ministry explore hydropower options as national grid struggles to light up all rural regions
Since it is hard for the National Grid to connect to all of the remote and rural areas, hydroelectricity options to provide power under 10 and 30 megawatts are being looked at by the Ministry of Electricity and Power (MOEP).
The current power generation mix of Myanmar in 2021 is hydroelectricity 40%, 34% with natural gas and 14% with Solar with an expected total rise of over 8100 megawatts.
Myanmar could only utilize electricity around 34% before 2016 but with emphasis on national electrification under the new government, the rate increased to 56% in 2020. The MOEP plans to bump it up to 75% by 2025 and total electrification by 2030.
Myanmar’s sources of power generation are renewable energy such as hydro and solar, clean energy such as natural gas and LNG.
The power ministry is also working on four projects; 51 megawatts Upper Kyine Taung hydropower station, 280 megawatts Upper Yal Ywar hydropower station, 152 megawatts Middle Paung Laung hydropower station and 111 megawatts Tha Htay hydropower station.
Hydro stations, across a total of 28, generate 3225 megawatts of the current total output of 65,000 megawatts daily.
The Upper Kyine Taung project is expected to be complete by 2021-2022, Upper Yal Ywar project by 2022-2023, Middle Paung Laung project by 2024-2025, Tha Htay project by 2025-2026. The ministry is also said to be working on other projects of all sizes across the nation.
The average electricity usage of a person was at 263 kWh in 2015-2016. It had since jumped to 432 kWh in 2019-2020, an increase of 169 kWh.
Source: elevenmyanmar
