Vietnam banks on battery power

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Hello reader,

In what feels like another life, my first job in Vietnam back in 2015 was as an elementary school teacher.

To put it mildly, teaching was not my calling. Fortunately, the job did teach me how to adapt to whatever the kids, my employers, or anyone else would throw at me.

For instance, experiencing a rolling blackout in the heat of the summer at a school on the outskirts of Hanoi was an eye-opener. I was already drenched in sweat when the ceiling fans slowly stopped spinning, leaving me stuck in a room full of 10-year-olds who were getting increasingly hot and agitated.

I got through the rest of that day with only a minor heat stroke and thought I’d never experience something like that again. Unfortunately, almost 10 years later, occasional rolling summer blackouts are still part of life in Vietnam.

Part of the government’s plan to keep the power flowing is to push for more renewable energy. As today’s premium piece explores, this has led local startups to look into developing homegrown battery technologies.

Today we look at:

• Vietnam’s battery startups think local
• Sea Group posts its first year of positive net income
• Other newsy highlights such as an Indian regulator alleging shell companies from Singapore are involved in money laundering and Akulaku’s buy now, pay later services returning to operation in Indonesia.

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Premium summary

Powering Vietnam

Vietnam’s latest power development plan aims to shift the country’s power generation mix away from coal and toward renewables like hydrogen and ammonia.

For this plan to work though, the ever-thorny problems of the high costs of storage systems and batteries will need to be addressed. Homegrown batteries may be part of the solution.

• Cutting costs: Cenergy is one example of a Vietnamese startup that aims to make a big impact on the country’s renewables market. The firm is developing vanadium redox flow batteries, which have several advantages over their counterparts such as higher energy, longer lifespan, and no problems of overcharging.Trinh Viet Dung, Cenergy’s CTO, says setting up large-scale production in Vietnam and locally sourcing materials could cut costs by 30%, which could be particularly attractive for industrial clients.
• VinFast charging on: Electric vehicle batteries are also an area of interest for Vietnamese firms, with EV maker VinFast leading the way locally. So far, the company has mainly imported battery cells for its vehicles, but with the acquisition of battery-maker affiliate VinES last October, VinFast will start producing lithium ferro-phosphate battery cells by the third quarter of 2024 via a joint venture with China-based battery maker Gotion.
• Heating up: Ho Chi Minh City-based startup Alterno is exploring a different segment: thermal energy storage for heating. The company uses a mixture of sand and its “trade secret” ingredients for high-temperature thermal energy storage of up to 600 degrees Celsius captured from renewable sources.

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Smooth sailing for Sea

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Hear it straight from the man who catapulted companies like Dropbox to phenomenal success

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