Vietnam Keeps Raising Electricity Prices. Here’s What Every Manufacturer Should Do About It

Vietnamese manufacturers are getting squeezed from two directions at once — and neither one is going away.

First, the heat. May 2026 saw Vietnam’s northern grid hit a peak shortfall of 4.35 million kilowatts, with more than 11,000 companies ordered to cut power. Bac Giang and Bac Ninh — home to Samsung, Foxconn and Canon plants — went on rotating blackouts.

Second, the price. In July, the Ministry of Industry and Trade raised the ceiling price for gas-fired power plants by 11.1%, to 3,410.64 VND/kWh. Thailand did the same thing — its May-August electricity tariff was raised to 3.95 baht per unit, up from 3.88. Vietnam has now raised retail electricity prices multiple times in recent years, and the government is already drafting yet another tariff restructuring.

Translation: power in Southeast Asia is getting scarcer and more expensive at exactly the same time factories need more of it to stay cool.

Take a mid-size electronics or garment factory in the north, say 2,000 m² of workshop space, running 10-hour shifts through the hot season.

That’s not a rounding error. That’s a month of a worker’s salary for an entire production line, every month, for four to five months a year.

Here’s the part that doesn’t show up in equipment brochures: air conditioners are the most power-hungry machines a factory owns, and they draw their heaviest load exactly when the grid is weakest.

During Vietnam’s May blackouts, the pattern was consistent: AC-heavy facilities were the first to be cut, because they’re the biggest consumers. Evaporative coolers, which use a fraction of the electricity, kept running through the same crisis — many plants ran their entire cooling load on backup generators or rooftop solar.

And there’s a second angle most buyers ignore: evaporative cooling pairs beautifully with solar. A typical 30,000 m³/h cooler draws 1-1.5 kW. A modest rooftop solar array can power a dozen units through the hottest afternoon hours — the same hours when grid power is most expensive and most unreliable.

We sell industrial evaporative coolers, so yes, we have a horse in this race. But the arithmetic stands on its own:

When electricity prices rise 11%, when the grid rotates blackouts, and when heatwaves arrive earlier every year, the factory that cools itself with 75% less electricity isn’t making an environmental statement. It’s making a financial decision that pays for itself — usually within the first hot season.

Vietnamese manufacturers are already doing the math, and it’s why we keep getting inquiries from exactly the plants that were hit hardest this year: textile mills in Hung Yen, electronics assembly in Bac Ninh, packaging plants in Binh Duong.

The next tariff increase is already being drafted. The next heatwave is already scheduled for May. The only question is whether your cooling bill is still working against you.