The 4th Annual Conference on Hydro Power Asia was held last September 6-7, 2023, at Hanoi Vietnam, to highlight the upcoming opportunities, identify the challenges and discuss the outlook for the hydro power segment in Asia. The event provides a platform to showcase new and promising technologies, best practices in construction and O&M strategies, as well as noteworthy projects in the region. And showcase best practices, and the most promising technologies and solutions.
The hydro power in the last few years has seen a growing deployment in Southeast Asia. As of end 2022, the installed hydro power capacity across the 10 member countries in ASEAN stood at 56 GW, which is around 21 per cent higher compared to 46 GW in 2017. Vietnam, Lao, Thailand, and Indonesia are the leading countries in terms of hydro power adoption.
The role of hydro power to tackle the intermittency issue of wind and solar, which is seen as the main bottleneck to fully decarbonizing the power system in many countries. While existing reservoir hydropower plants are the most affordable source of flexibility today, pumped storage facilities are becoming increasingly complementary in future power systems. Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Lao PDR have a good, pumped storage hydro potential in the near to medium term.
Southeast Asia’s energy demand is expected to increase by 60 per cent by 2040. To meet the region’s energy needs sustainably, the region is targeting35 percent of its installed capacity mix to come from renewable energy sources by 2025.
Hydro power could play an important role in national and regional socio-economic development. However, certain issues must be addressed, such as scaling up financing support for pumped storage hydro power, increasing data and information sharing for transboundary coordination of operations, and overcoming regulatory barriers.