Sekong province, Laos – Rising from verdant ridgelines of southern Laos, 133 Chinese-built wind turbines help power Vietnam’s surging growth and represent part of a regional rush to diversify energy sources. They’re bigger than trees,” 23-year-old Toukta Phonsala said from inside her wooden stilt house in Dak Wai village, her baby bouncing on her lap. Hydroelectric dams have proliferated across Southeast Asia in recent years, but production drops off in the dry season, and critics lament the ecological impacts.
Experts say wind is now set to take off and point to Laos’ 600-megawatt Monsoon Wind Power Project, which began operating in August 2025, as a bankable case study. Spanning an area the size of Singapore, the $700-million plan is the first cross-border wind project in Asia and the largest wind farm in Southeast Asia. Built by a Chinese state firm and owned by a Thai-led consortium, it sells electricity exclusively to Vietnam’s national grid via dedicated transmission lines.
Manufacturing hub Vietnam, Southeast Asia’s fastest-growing economy, was already importing hydropower from Laos, its poorest neighbor. But “the economics are moving in favor of wind,” said Tristan Bellingham, technical program lead at nonprofit EnergyLab Asia. Laos already hosts 90 hydropower plants, and there are dozens more in neighboring nations, leaving few optimal sites remaining.
Bellingham said other wind farms were now riding “the coattails of Monsoon,“ with one Laos official pointing to 10 to 15 projects under development nationwide. For Toukta, the 18 family members she lives with and other rice and coffee farmers residing near the turbines, Monsoon has brought new roads and improved access to fresh water and healthcare. What it has not brought to her community, however, is power.
Residents say they still experience outages during heavy storms, as Laos’ own electricity infrastructure is outdated and the state utility is heavily in debt. Still, Toukta is glad Laos can send power abroad. For Vietnam, the project offers a reliable source of less costly energy.
There were severe blackouts in 2023 when drought cut into hydropower supply, and the government warned in September of the risk of electricity shortages from next year due to delays in planned power projects and increasing demand. Through Monsoon, “wind power is being sold significantly cheaper to Vietnam than what Vietnam is buying wind power for locally,“ said Thomas Jakobsen, managing director at Indochina Energy Partners. He estimated state utility Electricity Vietnam (EVN) was paying Monsoon around six cents per kilowatt-hour — two to four cents less than the Vietnamese rate.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
