Electrification in Vietnam
From: David Marr
Date: Mon, Sep 13, 2010 at 7:47 PM
Has anyone done a history of electrification in Vietnam? I've just encountered the work of David E. Nye on electrifying America (and most recently his history of blackouts). For example, did the French electrify beyond cities and a few towns, e.g.the Hon Gay coal mining zone, or summer retreats like Tam Dao? Jumping forward, is there a study of rolling blackouts in Vietnam?
David Marr
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From: Dien Nguyen
Date: Tue, Sep 14, 2010 at 2:37 AM
Hello anh David,
This is a recent article in Dien Dan:
http://www.diendan.org/viet-nam/nan-cat-111ien-mat-111ien-o-viet-nam/
Nạn cắt điện, mất điện ở Việt Nam
Đặng Đình Cung Cập nhật : 26/08/2010 20:23
Trong bài này chúng tôi xin trình bày nguyên nhân và hậu quả của nạn
cắt điện mất điện và đề nghị một vài giải pháp
Cheers,
Dien
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From: David Biggs
Date: Tue, Sep 14, 2010 at 3:02 AM
Dear David and List-
This is a fascinating history of technology and VN society just waiting to be written. Certainly it could stretch from colonial times into the present. I have come across the Cie des Eaux et Electriques (sp. probably wrong) in the Fonds Goucoch, and I think there were some private companies that operated in towns. Rural electrification in places like the Mekong Delta was pretty limited into the 1960s. Lyndon Johnson as a man raised on the politics of rural electrification in the hill country of Texas tended to see the nation-building problems of Vietnam and SE Asia in similar terms. He repeatedly talked about the Mekong Committee dam cascade, and through Komer and the CORDS programs pushed efforts to bring electricity into model villages. Those projects were few but run through American contractors like Lyon & Associates. They tended to peter out after '68. I also found references to plans drafted in the Nixon era to build very large power plants, including nuclear. There was the reactor in Dalat but nothing came of that, either. I'd guess this story of rural electrification could also include the effects of hydroelectric and coal-burning power plants on rural areas like Hoa Binh. Also interesting to me is how the older electricity infrastructure has survived; and more recently the transnational delivery of electric power from plants in Cambodia, VN, Laos to other countries through an expanding grid.
- David Biggs
--
David Biggs
Department of History
1212 Humanities & Social Sciences Building
University of California - Riverside
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From: Tobias RETTIG
Date: Tue, Sep 14, 2010 at 3:26 AM
Dear Davids and List,
Indonesianists have been writing on topic related to modernity, see for instance Rudolf Mrázek's Engineers of Happy Land: Technology and Nationalism in a Colony (2002, Princeton University Press), see http://press.princeton.edu/titles/7282.html
I paste the information on this book from the PUP website after my signature, but I will exclude the reviews.
Pramoedya Ananta Toer's tetralogy is also full of modernity, including electricity, and the possibilities it brings.
Best,
Tobias
Tobias Rettig, School of Social Sciences, Singapore Management University
http://press.princeton.edu/titles/7282.html
Based on close reading of historical documents--poetry as much as statistics--and focused on the conceptualization of technology, this book is an unconventional evocation of late colonial Netherlands East Indies (today Indonesia). In considering technology and the ways that people use and think about things, Rudolf Mrázek invents an original way to talk about freedom, colonialism, nationalism, literature, revolution, and human nature.
The central chapters comprise vignettes and take up, in turn, transportation (from shoes to road-building to motorcycle clubs), architecture (from prison construction to home air-conditioning), optical technologies (from photography to fingerprinting), clothing and fashion, and the introduction of radio and radio stations. The text clusters around a group of fascinating recurring characters representing colonialism, nationalism, and the awkward, inevitable presence of the European cultural, intellectual, and political avant-garde: Tillema, the pharmacist-author of Kromoblanda; the explorer/engineer IJzerman; the "Javanese princess" Kartina; the Indonesia nationalist journalist Mas Marco; the Dutch novelist Couperus; the Indonesian novelist Pramoedya Ananta Toer; and Dutch left-wing liberal Wim Wertheim and his wife.
In colonial Indies, as elsewhere, people employed what Proust called "remembering" and what Heidegger called "thinging" to sense and make sense of the world. In using this observation to approach Indonesian society, Mrázek captures that society off balance, allowing us to see it in unfamiliar positions. The result is a singular work with surprises for readers throughout the social sciences, not least those interested in Southeast Asia or colonialism more broadly.
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From: sarah womack
Date: Tue, Sep 14, 2010 at 6:20 AM
Dear All--
I've recently been doing some work on this at the municipal level in Hanoi and Phnom Penh, and there's certainly plenty of material available-- the role of electrification in state vision was very much in contrast with that in comparable places (perhaps Batavia in particular), and the endless (& very well-documented) struggle between city and protectorate-level administrations and the Cie des Eaux & d'Electricite has the potential, I think, to transform the narrative on the relationships between administration and enterprise in the colony. If anyone's working on this or other matters of colonial infrastructure, please do get in touch-- I won't tax the general list with my fascination for cables and sewer systems.
Sarah Womack
Faculty of History
University of Oxford
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From: Michael Digregorio
Date: Tue, Sep 14, 2010 at 7:40 AM
Dear David,
We all know that rural electrification took place across the Red River Delta rather quickly in the mid to late 1990s. Most people think that this must be due to a huge state investment to reach rural communes. In part. In fact what was going on was the creation of an electricity market. For roughly 10,000 USD a local investor could buy and install a transformer sub-station that brought the 35 KV medium tension line down to 220 volt house level. The investor would install lines and meters (at a price) and then buy electricity at a bulk rate from EVN. The difference between the bulk rate and the household rate covered the cost of investment in about 1 year. After that, it was pure gravy. All three villages I was doing research in at that time were undergoing this process of electrification. For farmers who had a small amount of electricity, and not much cash income, there were protests over this loss of what was essentially a public good. If you can imagine this: people were afraid that would not have enough cash to cover a 40 w light bulb and an electric fan. In one village that recycled plastic, the households that produced plastic pellets screamed and hollered that they would go bankrupt when electricity was no longer a public good. In protest, they switched to using coal "bee's nests" for heating elements on their extruders. Others took the change in stride because of the opportunities it gave them to mechanize their production.
Some of this is included in my dissertation, but not enough.
In 2000, the government eventually decided that it was illegal for individuals to retail electricity and over a period of about a year, bought out the transformer station owners. Who have now disappeared from the institution history.
Here is a short passage from my dissertation:
..... Da Hoi was struggling against the limitations of diesel power. Diesel engines were too dirty, too noisy, too expensive to operate, and too weak to power larger machines. The village needed a triple phase electrical supply. Luu Q T, seeing the opportunity, took the initiative to investigate costs and procedures required to set up a transformer substation in the village. A native of Da Hoi with a high level position in Hanoi Electrical Power Company assisted him in these investigations. Since private investment in transformer substations had never been attempted, the village leadership advised T to embed his project within the agricultural cooperative. The agricultural cooperative, which owned Da Hoi’s only transformer station, had the right to distribute electricity but did not have the capital or the will to engage in the risky business of setting up a new transformer on its own. It could, however, provide a cover and it would accept a service charge.[1] Through the cooperative, most households in the village were asked to contribute 50,000 VND (3.50 USD) to assist in the purchase of equipment; power press owners were asked to contribute 500,000 VND (35 USD), and rolling mill operators were asked to contribute between 1 and 2 million VND (70-140 USD). T asked Tran V V to help him fill in the remaining capital and organize management. V's mother, who is elder Chanh’s sister, loaned her son his initial investment capital. The cooperative carried out paperwork necessary for the purchase of a 560 kW transformer; T and V laid cable, erected cement posts, and organized the management system. They set up the transformer behind the People’s Assembly Hall, to the side of the communal house courtyard, in the center of the village. Work was completed in November 1990 and this first "private" transformer substation, connected to Hanoi's power grid, came on line shortly thereafter.[2] Almost overnight, electrical motors replaced diesel engines and demand for electricity skyrocketed.
During the next year, T and V had a disagreement over the organization of electrical supply. Toan wanted to move their transformer to the dike road, gradually adding more in a circuit along the road. V, the cooperative, and the commune People’s Committee[3] preferred to concentrate transformer stations near the courtyard of the old communal house.[4] V won, making it possible for his sister, Tran T L, to set up a second 560 kW transformer station at the communal house site. T, however, decided to carry out his plan without permission, was halted by commune authorities, and rather than return to the old site, sold his share of the transformer to V. V resold this transformer to his sister who returned it to its original site. V took money from this sale and set up two additional transformer stations, one at the communal house site and one across the river. As a concession to T, V asked him to join in the construction of these transformer stations. T refused.[5] V and his sister L were thus established as the commune’s primary investors in the electrical distribution network. In this tumultuous way, Da Hoi’s electrical supply rose from 150 kW in 1990 to 2,830 kW by the end of 1991. By the end of 1994, V and L had increased this capacity to 4,210 kW.
[1] Roughly 2 percent of profits are paid to the cooperative each month. By 1998, this totaled about 140 USD per month. This fund is used to maintain the village’s agricultural infrastructure.
[2] By agreement with power grid managers, transformer stations can officially come on line several days after electricity is flowing. Income earned from the difference between official consumption, measured by transformer meters, and unofficial consumption, measured in household meter readings, can be divided.
[3] V's first cousin, the son of his mother’s sister and elder Chanh’s grandson, is Tran V T, chairman of the commune People’s Committee since1992
[4] This proposed transformation of the village’s ritual space was impetus for the movement for the inclusion of the temple to Tran Duc Hue in the provincial registry of historical sites.
[5] T had failed, but he was not out of the electrical distribution business. With the administrative assistance of a brother-in-law living in Dong Anh (Hanoi), he set up a 560 kW transformer station on the border of the village with Duc Tu (Hanoi) in 1996. This transformer station was upgraded to 1,000 kW in 1998.
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From: Tai, Hue-Tam Ho
Date: Tue, Sep 14, 2010 at 8:24 AM
Electrification came in the southern countryside a bit earlier than in the North. I have not studied what the situation was in the colonial period.
In Saigon, after 1965, the increased American presence meant increased use of electricity. Some apartment buildings went up to accommodate this population, complete with air conditioning. I remember complaints about clinics nearby lacking running water and electricity while the new buildings not only had electricity but often their own generators. Still, many households began having refrigerators, proudly displayed in their living rooms. Meanwhile, in the countryside, villages were provided with TVs as well as small farm machinery.
The Da Nhim dam (built with Japanese aid) was supposed to generate additional electricity not only for Saigon but also for the countryside, but it was blown up by the NLF. This led to regular blackouts, usually starting around 8PM.
Hue-Tam Ho Tai
Kenneth T. Young Professor
of Sino-Vietnamese History
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From: Joseph Hannah
Date: Tue, Sep 14, 2010 at 9:25 AM
Dear all,
On an anecdotal level, I recall my first trip to Vietnam in 1988-89.
We visited my wife's *que ngoai* in a good-sized village in huyen
Trang Bang, just beyond Cu Chi and just inside the Tay Ninh provincial
border from HCMC. This is about 30-40 km outside the city center. The
village was about 2-3 km outside Trang Bang proper, down a dusty but
easily accessed dirt road.
At the time of this first visit there was no electricity in the
village (though Trang Bang proper was electrified, I think.) Life was
sleepy after sundown -- some few transistor radios and simple oil
lamps. Bedtimes were early. My wife laughed at me when I gawked and
gasped at the amazing display of stars in that dark, dark village --
something I had only experienced when camping high in the mountains of
my native Washington State.
We only stayed in the village a couple days on that trip, but we
returned about a year later (maybe summer 1990. (Hien remembers these
dates better than I). By that time the village had been completely
transformed by the coming of electricity. The main streets were lit,
many people had TV sets (which they played very loudly), coffee and
drink shops were brighter and much noisier after dark, video game
parlors had already moved in, the rice mills operated late, traffic
buzzed back and forth well into the night. The sleepy, peaceful
after-dark atmosphere was (seemingly to me) instantly transformed into
bustling, noisy activity that lasted until at least midnight.
(Unfortunately for sleepy-headed me, the mornings still started at
4:30 or 5:00 am. Sigh.)
Clearly electrification had an amazing transformative effect on the
lives and the economy of the village-dwelling population. Just how
much I could not appreciate until I witnessed it first hand.
Cheers,
Joe Hannah
Department of Geography
University of Washington, Seattle
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From: Stephen Leisz
Date: Fri, Sep 17, 2010 at 9:01 AM
Dear Michael and David,
It would also be interesting to look at the process rural electrification took in the northern uplands. In 1997 I was in a Da Bac Tay village in Hoa Binh, fairly isolated at that time (torches were still used by many for lighting). Some houses had electricity generated by micro-hydro generators that were scattered in streams around the village. Up in Pu Mat in 1997 I found the same generators (though not as many - a much poorer area) when visiting Dan Lai villages later that year and in 2001 in an isolated Black Thai village in Tuong Duong, Nghe An, I found a very complex network of wiring from a large number of micro-hydro generators (I almost walked into bare wires strung across the mountain path I was walking along). When I revisited the Da Bac Tay village in 2003 most of the micro-hydro generators were gone. Some reported that the government had made people disconnect them and buy the government provided electricity as electrical poles and lines had finally been constructed into the area a year earlier. These people reported that they didn't really want to remove their micro-hydro generators as that provided them with free electricity, as opposed to their need now to buy electricity. I think this story would also be very interesting to look at in more depth.
Steve
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From: Tuan Hoang
Date: Sat, Sep 18, 2010 at 7:36 AM
Adding to David's post below, there was quite a bit of American work on electrification in Saigon and the provincial capitals too. Not, obviously, to the same extent as in the countryside since there was already electrification in Saigon before 1954. But there were new or improved telecommunication projects that needed more electrical power. I remember seeing some materials on this from the MACV files at the archives of the U.S. Army Miltary Institute. AID was overseer & Gustav Hirsch a contractor in the mid-1960s. There was stuff on water projects too.
I agree that this is an excellent topic waiting for research: similar to the recent work on RMK-BRJ in James Carter's Inventing Vietnam, but with an older history as well.
~Tuan Hoang
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From: Robert Silano
Date: Tue, Sep 14, 2010 at 9:47 AM
One useful English-language source on the development of electric power generation in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos up through the interwar years is the volume entitled Indo-China by J.C. Stuttard that was published during World War II in the British Naval Intelligence geographical handbook series (Cambridge: H.M. Stationery Office/The University Press, December 1943). The relevant section (pp. 330-32) includes a map showing the location of generating stations throughout Indochina and their kilowatt capacity (circa 1937). At the time there were reportedly 19 thermo-electric and 4 hydro-electric plants. The notes also contain reference to a number of French sources on both public and private electric generation.
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From: Gilles de Gantès
Date: Tue, Sep 14, 2010 at 11:50 AM
Dear List
To answer to the early question.
The first Company which has produced electricity in Vietnam was set up in the 1890ies by Hermenier in Hanoi, a former employee of Messageries Maritimes shiping Company. He was soon to build an empire grounded on Electricity and water supplying in Hanoi, Saigon and Phnom Penh. The number of datas dedicated to the topic in French archives defy description.
Towns were of course the main concerns of Hermenier Company and countryside was badly equiped.
The topic can give a good insight to the colonial world (technology as a proof of the 'superiority of the West, economic apartheid), to the impact of technologic changes (oil or electricity) and to 'connected histories' (Electricity triumph, for the French case can be illustrated by the 1900 International Exhibition in Paris and, at this time, a minority of French towns were not equiped).
Gilles de Gantès
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From: David Biggs
Date: Wed, Sep 15, 2010 at 3:29 AM
Having just returned from a gathering in a village in Quang Tri, I learned of another major source for rural electrification projects, esp. in southern VN - remittances. This was big about 10-12 yrs ago, less so now.
--
David Biggs
Department of History
University of California - Riversid