27 SEP 2026 — Ho Chi Minh City's power utility has told data-centre operators, including Viettel and CMC, that it may stop or reduce their electricity supply if they do not pay bills calculated at the commercial rate. The operators say they should be paying the lower production rate, and a national ministry letter appears to agree.
The dispute has run in the Vietnamese press since mid-September. In the same week, a United States agency began funding a feasibility study for a 300-megawatt AI data-centre campus in the same city.
What the utility has said
EVNHCMC, the city's arm of the state electricity group, put the amount owed by data-centre operators at 11.35 billion dong as of 16 September. Tuổi Trẻ reports its position: where a business does not pay after being properly notified of the procedure and deadline, the subsidiary power companies will begin the process of stopping or reducing supply.
No source we read reports an actual disconnection. The statement is conditional, aimed at unpaid bills rather than any particular site.
Two documents, two rates
The argument is over which rule governs. EVNHCMC relies on Circular 60/2025/TT-BCT of 2 December 2025 from the Ministry of Industry and Trade, which it reads as putting data centres on the commercial retail rate. The operators rely on letter 2818/BCT-ĐL of 22 April 2026 from the same ministry, which allows the production rate.
Tuổi Trẻ reports that the State Audit sided with the utility: a circular is binding regulation, and a ministry letter is guidance that cannot replace it.
The Ministry of Science and Technology has taken the operators' side. VietnamNet reports that on 15 September it wrote to the industry ministry for the third time, asking for one national rule. It says data-centre electricity costs rose by more than 50 per cent in the first three billing periods, and that most provincial power companies apply the production rate while Ho Chi Minh City's still applies the commercial one.
The same ministry has issued a circular and a letter that point in different directions. Ho Chi Minh City's utility is enforcing the stricter of the two; the rest of the country uses the other.
How much power is at stake
Thanh Niên reports that Ho Chi Minh City has 14 data centres run by 9 companies, drawing about 33 MW in total. Four approved projects need about 200 MW more, and the long-term figure is up to 1,000 MW. It puts the city's supply reserve at about 35 per cent.
The largest single site named is Viettel's centre at Tân Phú Trung industrial park. Thanh Niên describes it as 140 MW of design capacity and the first Vietnamese data centre past 100 MW; Tuổi Trẻ gives it as more than 100 MW. The figures are not in conflict, but they are not the same number.
Nationally, Thanh Niên counts 41 commercial data centres with 221 MW of design capacity, and about 950 MW expected by 2030. Ngô Đức Lâm, a former deputy director of the Energy Institute, told it that demand from AI and data centres was not fully forecast when the national power plan was drawn up.
The campus planned alongside it
On 23 September the United States Trade and Development Agency announced funding for a feasibility study of Stavian Digital Park, a 300-hectare campus in Ho Chi Minh City. Cushman & Wakefield, appointed to lead it, gives the first phase as 300 MW by 2030, with access to up to 200 Tb/s of international subsea connectivity and on-site solar alongside a grid connection.
Power infrastructure is one of the study's 15 workstreams. No figure for the grant has been published, and no source describes how the campus would be connected or what rate it would pay.
Set the two stories side by side and the scale is plain. One planned campus would need roughly nine times the combined load Thanh Niên reports for every data centre in the city, and the city's utility is already in a billing dispute with the operators it has.
Where it fits
Vietnam's plans have been growing in steps. In August a sovereign data-centre consortium started at 20 MW on the way to a 100 MW network. Malaysia has gone further in putting a number on the grid: its energy minister projects data centres taking 31 per cent of the country's electricity by 2035.
Vietnam's argument is at an earlier stage. The dispute is still over which tariff data centres pay on the power they already use, not how much power they will eventually take.
