Đặc khu Phú Quý, Lâm Đồng · Landmark
Phu Quy Wind Power Plant
Picture the paper pinwheel you once ran into the wind with as a child. Now raise it onto a white tower 60 m tall, make three of them, and set them in the grassland on the north of an island. On Phú Quý, that pinwheel is no toy.
Picture the paper pinwheel you once ran into the wind with as a child. Now raise it onto a white tower 60 m tall, give each blade a length of 37 m, make three of them, and set them in the grassland on the north of an island. That is Phong điện Phú Quý, the Phú Quý wind power plant, in the special zone of Phú Quý (đặc khu, a special administrative unit), Lâm Đồng province. Here, the pinwheel is no toy.
Three white pinwheels on the grasslands of Phú Quý
Before these three towers, the electricity of around 27,000 island residents depended on a single diesel power plant. The wind farm was built to ease power shortages and reduce dependence on oil. The investor was PV Power (PetroVietnam Power Corporation). Construction began in late 2010 on land of two former communes, Long Hải and Ngũ Phụng; the plant started generating power in August 2012 and was inaugurated in early 2013.
It was presented as the first wind power project in Vietnam to run as a wind–diesel hybrid, feeding into the island's own grid. Are you curious how a small island with a grid of its own shares the load between wind and oil? That is the puzzle here: wind and diesel have to share one small grid. Ten years after it first generated power, in 2022, the three turbines were still turning and supplying the island. What was once a novelty has become part of everyday island life.
Roughly five kilometres northeast of the island's centre, the three white towers appear from afar against the sky. Grassland surrounds their bases, and sometimes you will come across cattle grazing there. There is no ticket: visitors stop to look and take photos. For a full view of all three, go up to Linh Sơn Pagoda on Cao Cát Mountain or to the lighthouse on Cấm Mountain. The next time you flip a light switch, will you wonder where that power comes from? On Phú Quý, part of the answer stands out in the grassland, three white arms still turning.
Enough to decide whether to go
- What it is
- A cluster of 3 wind turbines belonging to a working wind power plant
- Where
- North of Phú Quý island, roughly five kilometres northeast of the island's centre; Phú Quý special zone, Lâm Đồng province
- Scale
- Three towers 60 m tall, blades 37 m long
- Timeline
- Construction began late 2010, power generation from August 2012, inaugurated early 2013
- Tickets
- No ticket
- Best full view
- From Linh Sơn Pagoda on Cao Cát Mountain or the lighthouse on Cấm Mountain
From someone who has been
Look from the outside: this is first and foremost a working power installation, not an amusement area, so do not climb or touch the equipment, and do not count on getting right up to the base of the towers. Photographers will enjoy it, since the three white towers look great on camera; to see all three at once, head up to Linh Sơn Pagoda or the Cấm Mountain lighthouse.
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Source
Scale and location — three 60 m towers with 37 m blades, on the land of the two former communes of Long Hải and Ngũ Phụng — come from Báo Điện tử Chính phủ (25 Jan 2013). The 6 MW capacity consisting of three Vestas 2 MW turbines and its role in the island grid in 2022 come from Tiền Phong (6 Jan 2022). The investor PV Power and the total capital of about 335 billion VND come from the news on the 2010 investment certificate on Tiết kiệm năng lượng. The inauguration milestone of 24 Jan 2013 comes from SGGP and EVN; the idea 'Vietnam's first hybrid wind–diesel wind power project' is the investor's own wording, repeated by EVN, SGGP and Báo Chính phủ. The operating limit of the wind power (at most 16 hours/day in 2013) comes from the PV Power page (4 Jul 2013); the earlier picture of the island's power relying only on 3,000 kW of diesel comes from Tuổi Trẻ. The photo spots and the scene of crowds of visitors come from Ngôi Sao – VnExpress (26 Apr 2023); the grassland with cows, the distance to the centre, no ticket sales and the panoramic viewpoints come from the travel blogs Lữ hành Việt Nam (2021, 2026) and Donatourist. Rejected: Wikipedia's figure of 8 MW and the milestone 'inaugurated in Aug 2012' (six sources say 6 MW, and the inauguration ceremony was in Jan 2013); the sentence 'wind as baseload, diesel covering the peaks' (that was the 2012 design plan, not actual operation); the sentence 'wind power gives the island electricity 24/24' (the investor's own page says wind runs at most 16 hours/day). Who owns and operates the plant today, and the rotor diameter, have not been established.
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