PUTRAJAYA: Tenaga Nasional Bhd, through subsidiary TNB Renewables Sdn Bhd, is buying a 39 per cent stake in a 21.6 megawatt power project comprising five rooftop solar plants in Vietnam from Singapore's Sunseap Group.
TNB, in an exchange filing today, said the acquisition would extend its collaboration with Sunseap beyond Malaysia and Singapore cross border partnership, capturing the rapid growth in the Vietnam renewable energy (RE) market.
TNB president and chief executive officer Datuk Ir. Baharin Din said the acquisition would be another step forward towards achieving the company's ambition to grow its RE and utility businesses in Southeast Asia.
"This acquisition will serve as a beachhead for TNB to establish a local presence in Vietnam and expand into the rapidly growing RE and utility market in Vietnam.
"This acquisition builds on our earlier Malaysia-Singapore cross-border collaboration with Sunseap and demonstrates our commitment in transforming TNB into a regional RE and utility player," he said in the statement.
The acquisition is expected to be completed by March this year.
Upon completion, Sunseap's shareholding will drop to 51 per cent stake.
Sun Times Energy Joint Stock Company, an existing shareholder of the projects, will continue to own 10 per cent stake.
The acquisition marks an important milestone for TNB as it expands its international RE footprint into Southeast Asia.
Prior to this, TNB's global presence in RE consists of a total portfolio of 2,732.3MW in Malaysia (including 2,536.1MW of large hydro) and 666MW across the UK, Turkey and India comprising mainly solar, wind and hydro energy generation assets.
TNB aims to grow its overall RE portfolio to 8,300MW by 2025 (including large hydro).
Sunseap is one of the top solar rooftop companies in Southeast Asia and the largest solar company in Singapore with fully integrated solar business including presence in the energy retail segment.
The project has secured the Feed-in Tariff (FiT) under the FiT2 scheme in Vietnam which is intended to promote investments in renewable energy sources through lucrative and above- market rate tariffs.
Having achieved commercial operation date in December 2020, all five plants are under 20-year power purchase agreements with the state-owned utility company Vietnam Electricity to supply clean energy to the country's national grid.
Sunseap has a net capacity of 1.2GW across 11 markets and more than 200 assets in various stages of development.