TNB expands Asean RE footprint with Vietnam foray

TNB president and chief executive officer Datuk Baharin Din described the acquisition as another step forward towards achieving TNB’s ambition to grow its RE and utility businesses in South-East Asia.

KUALA LUMPUR: Tenaga Nasional Bhd is expanding its international renewable energy (RE) footprint into South-East Asia with its foray into Vietnam by buying a stake in a 21.6MW project.

In a statement to Bursa Malaysia yesterday, it said TNB Renewables Sdn Bhd will acquire a 39% stake in a project comprising five rooftop solar plants in Vietnam from Singapore’s Sunseap Group.

This acquisition extends TNB’s collaboration with Sunseap, beyond the Malaysia and Singapore cross border partnership, to capture the rapid growth in the Vietnam RE market.

“The project has secured the feed-in tariff (FiT) under the FiT2 scheme in Vietnam which is intended to promote investments in renewable energy sources through lucrative and above market rate tariffs.

“Having achieved commercial operation date in December 2020, all five plants are under 20-year power purchase agreements (PPAs) with the state-owned utility company, Vietnam Electricity, to supply clean energy to the country’s national grid, ” TNB said.

Sunseap holds a 90% stake in the projects and after the sale of 39% stake, it will be reduced to 51%. The transaction is slated for the first quarter of this year.

Sun Times Energy Joint Stock Company, an existing shareholder of the projects, will continue to own 10% of the equity interest.

Prior to this acquisition, TNB’s global presence in RE consists of a total portfolio of 2,732.3MW in Malaysia (including 2,536.1MW of large hydro) and 666MW across the UK, Turkey and India comprising mainly solar, wind and hydro energy generation assets.

TNB aims to grow its overall RE portfolio to 8,300MW by 2025 (including large hydro).

TNB president and chief executive officer Datuk Baharin Din described the acquisition as another step forward towards achieving TNB’s ambition to grow its RE and utility businesses in South-East Asia.

“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 in Vietnam. This acquisition builds on our earlier Malaysia-Singapore cross-border collaboration with Sunseap and demonstrates our commitment in transforming TNB into a regional RE and utility player, ” Baharin said.

Sunseap is one of the top solar rooftop companies in South-East 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.