The Northern Power Corporation (NPC) under the Electricity of Vietnam has launched a project to connect more than 30,000 ethnic households in northern mountainous Son La province to the national electricity grid.

The project, worth 557.8 billion VND (26.6 million USD), will be implemented in three years and include the laying of more than 540 kilometres of 35-kV and 22-kV transmission lines and 875 kilometres of 0,4 kV line, as well as the building of 218 transformer stations and installation of electricity meters for each household.

Eighty-five percent of the project’s capital will be allocated from the State budget while the NPC contributes the rest, according to the NPC director, Nguyen Phuc Vinh.

The project will connect the national power grid to an additional 557 remote villages in the province. Currently, about 54,000 households in the province still live without power supplies, accounting for 24 percent of the total population. The figure is expected to fall by 5 percent when the project is completed by 2015.-VNA