HCM CITY (Biz Hub) — The HCM City Electricity Company has promised to reduce scheduled brownouts by 20 per cent in the last two month of this lunar year and fix power outages within 75 minutes at a recent meeting with European, South Korean, and US companies.

The companies have been complaining that the electricity supply is unreliable and it takes the utility too long to fix power outages.

At the meeting they suggested that businesses should be informed in advance about load shedding plans by email.

The Government's website, chinhphu.vn, quotes EVN chairman Duong Quang Thanh as saying: "In recent times Viet Nam Electricity Group (EVN) has increased investment in power generation and the grid to meet the 11-12 per cent yearly increase in power demand.

"During the investment process, EVN has not ensured best quality of power supply.

"EVN has set up five customer-care centres to improve our service quality."

Senior officials at the HCM City Electricity Company promised to discuss grid upgrade plans with customers and inform them about the schedule at least one month in advance, and to complete all such tasks within five hours.

In addition, the company has begun to use live-line technology that enables it to fix outages quicker.

In the first 11 months of this year it was used on 2,774 occasions, 100 per cent higher than in 2014.

This year the company has supplied 19 billion KWh of power, nearly 9 per cent higher year-on-year. — VNS