The Hanoitimes - The first made-in-Vietnam 500 kV transformer is ready to be put into operation, Tran Van Quang, general director of the Dong Anh Electrical Equipment Manufacturing Joint Stock Company (EEMC) said .

Quang said that his company and the Institute of Energy under the Ministry of Industry and Trade had finished the final tests o­n the machinery.

Vietnam was the o­nly South East Asian nation to succeed in producing this kind of transformer, he said.

The first locally-made VND118 billion ($5.4 million) transformer will be installed and operate at the 500kV Station in Nho Quan district in the northern province of Ninh Binh , Quang said.

To produce the machine, EEMC had sent skilled workers and management and technical staff to work at local and foreign transformer stations to learn and exchange production experiences.

Few countries are capable of manufacturing 500kV transformers, including Germany , France , Switzerland , Japan , the Republic of Korea (RoK) and China ; and their import prices were very high, the director added.

The EEMC was 25-30 per cent cheaper to produce than the imported products of similar quality, meaning the 500kV transformer production will help save State spending, contribute to reducing the trade deficit and improve the efficiency of the country's electricity sector, he stressed.