Vietnam's "power shortage" worsens! Samsung Electronics, FII and other factories are affected.

Vietnam is facing a serious power shortage as the summer heat wave hits, and manufacturers pouring into the Southeast Asian country are also suffering.

According to Vietnamese sources cited by The Wall Street Journal on Friday, some production bases of Apple suppliers such as FII and Luxshare Precision, as well as Samsung Electronics' base in northern Vietnam, have received notices from local power companies to consider rotating power outages or at least reduce electricity consumption during peak hours.

They said power supply had been tight since mid-May and they had been informed by the local government that the power shortage was expected to last at least until late June, and they were preparing for it.

"One year too many electronics factories have expanded their production scale in the region, and power consumption has skyrocketed," said one insider.

It is not clear whether Apple's production has been affected. Apple has recently increased production of tablets, laptops and other devices in Vietnam.

According to Apple's latest supplier list released this year, FII and Luxshare Precision are both contracted by Apple in North Jiang Province, Vietnam. Samsung Electronics has a factory in North Ning Province, which supplies components to Apple in addition to competing with Apple in the smartphone market.

According to local media in Vietnam, the power shortage is due to drying up of rivers and hot weather.

As early as May, Vietnam's power warned that available power during peak periods in May, June and July could be reduced by 1.6 million to 4.9 million kilowatts. On Wednesday, local media cited official estimates that the worst-case scenario was that northern power supply could be reduced by 8 million kilowatts.

According to sources, the local government has asked some of FII's Vietnamese manufacturing plants to consider suspending production from dusk to midnight for 20 days, but to allow them to restart production from midnight to dawn. They said Vietnamese factories were currently trying to maintain most of their business and were considering building their own power generation facilities next year.

A spokeswoman for Sumitomo Corporation, a Japanese trading company operating industrial parks in Vietnam, said the company had received a power outage notice from Vietnam Power Company over the weekend. Sumitomo said it was evaluating the notice with its tenants and considering rotating power outages.

According to local media reports, rotating power outages have become part of daily life in Vietnam. Media cited an industrial ministry official as saying that as of June 6, due to low water levels, total hydroelectric power generation was less than a quarter of its design capacity, with power generation down by thousands of megawatts.