Vietnam business electricity tariff
Rate schedule by voltage for business customers (kinh doanh) — hotels, retail, offices, commercial data centres, and other services. All rates VND/kWh, excluding VAT.
| Voltage | Peak | Standard | Off-peak | Spread |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ≥ 22 kV | 5,025 | 2,887 | 1,609 | 3,416 |
| 6 kV to <22 kV | 5,202 | 3,108 | 1,829 | 3,373 |
| < 6 kV | 5,422 | 3,152 | 1,918 | 3,504 |
All rates VND/kWh excl. VAT. Highlighted row is the most common mid-scale commercial connection; third-party data centres sit here post-Circular 60/2025.
Rates: Decision 1279/QĐ-BCT, effective 10 May 2025. Windows: Decision 963/QĐ-BCT, effective 22 April 2026.
Rate levels in force since 10 May 2025. TOU clock windows restructured by Decision 963/QĐ-BCT effective 22 April 2026 — morning peak abolished, evening peak consolidated 17:30–22:30 Mon–Sat.
Key facts
| Rate effective since | 10 May 2025 (rate levels unchanged in 2026; TOU windows restructured by Decision 963/QĐ-BCT effective 22 April 2026) |
|---|---|
| Legal source | Rates: Decision 1279/QĐ-BCT, issued 9 May 2025 by MOIT. Windows: Decision 963/QĐ-BCT, signed and effective 22 April 2026 by MOIT |
| Voltage bands | Three: ≥22 kV, 6 kV to <22 kV, <6 kV (no ≥110 kV business band — business customers do not connect directly at transmission voltage) |
| Customer class | Business (kinh doanh) — services, retail, hotels, offices, third-party data centres (post-Circular 60), F&B, and other non-manufacturing commercial operations |
| Peak hours (all voltages) | Monday–Saturday 17:30–22:30 (5 hours continuous, per Decision 963/QĐ-BCT effective 22 April 2026); no peak on Sundays |
| Off-peak hours (all voltages) | All days 00:00–06:00 (6 hours/day, per Decision 963/QĐ-BCT) |
| TOU meter required | Mandatory for transformers ≥25 kVA or consumption ≥2,000 kWh/month (Circular 60/2025/TT-BCT) |
| Two-part tariff eligibility | Not in the July 2026 pilot. Pilot targets ~7,000 large manufacturers at ≥22 kV and ≥200,000 kWh/month; business extension realistic 2028–2030 |
TOU windows and the Circular 60 reclassification
The rates shown in the hero apply at the voltages shown, in the TOU windows below. TOU windows are identical across all three business voltage bands — and identical to the manufacturing schedule — under Decision 963/QĐ-BCT, the implementing decision under Circular 60/2025/TT-BCT signed and effective 22 April 2026 (see §5.2 below).
TOU windows · Monday–Saturday
- Peak17:30–22:305 hrs/day continuous
- Standard06:00–17:30 and 22:30–24:0013 hrs/day
- Off-peak00:00–06:006 hrs/day
TOU windows · Sunday
- No peakSunday weekday-peak window is billed at standard rate—
- Standard06:00–24:0018 hrs/day
- Off-peak00:00–06:006 hrs/day
The Circular 60 data-centre reclassification — the defining business-tariff story of 2025–2026
Effective 2 December 2025, third-party data centres (colocation, hyperscale) that previously paid the manufacturing tariff were reclassified into the business tariff under Circular 60/2025/TT-BCT — raising their blended electricity cost by approximately 45–55%. Captive data centres serving only internal operations remain on manufacturing; mixed-use facilities are allocated proportionally.
The industry impact is approximately VND 1,000 billion/year of incremental OpEx across Vietnam's ~221 MW of operating commercial data-centre capacity, with individual operators reporting cost increases above 50% across three billing cycles. Industry pushback from Viettel, VNPT, FPT, CMC, VNG, and the Vietnam Internet Association has been intense but — as of April 2026 — unsuccessful.
Coverage of the reclassification through the operator lens is on Arcus's data-centres page →, and the intersection with the BESS pricing framework is on Circular 62 for data centres →.
Two-part tariff — not yet applicable to business customers
The July 2026 pilot under Decree 146/2025/NĐ-CP applies only to approximately 7,000 manufacturing customers at ≥22 kV consuming ≥200,000 kWh/month. Extension to business-tariff customers (hotels, offices, third-party data centres) is expected 2028–2030 but not confirmed. For now, a business-tariff customer pays only the energy charges in the hero, with no capacity component.
See Two-part tariff explained → for the full pilot structure.
Where this tariff sits in Vietnam's C&I tariff structure
Business vs manufacturing — one-row decision prompt
| Customer class at 22 kV | Peak | Standard | Off-peak | Spread |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Business (kinh doanh) | 5,025 | 2,887 | 1,609 | 3,416 |
| Manufacturing (sản xuất) | 3,398 | 1,833 | 1,190 | 2,208 |
At the same 22 kV voltage, a business-tariff customer pays 48% more per peak kWh than a manufacturing customer and benefits from a peak-to-off-peak spread 55% wider. This has two direct commercial implications. First, for operators whose legacy classification may be wrong — a mixed commercial/industrial site, or a facility that could argue for captive (not third-party) status — correct classification can be worth VND 1,000+ million/year on a typical mid-size site. Second, for any operator correctly on business tariff, the wider spread makes behind-the-meter BESS more economically attractive than at any manufacturing equivalent. See Vietnam manufacturing electricity tariff → for the manufacturing-side picture.
TOU clock window restructure — Decision 963/QĐ-BCT (22 April 2026)
The rates above did not change — Decision 963/QĐ-BCT is windows-only, not a rate revision. What changed is when the peak, off-peak and standard rates apply. Decision 963 is the implementing ministerial decision under Circular 60/2025/TT-BCT, signed and effective 22 April 2026 (Thứ trưởng Nguyễn Hoàng Long). It restructures the TOU clock windows that have governed Vietnamese C&I tariffs since 2014. Two competing drafts were on the table during the 15 April 2026 consultation period — a MOIT seasonal proposal and an EVN year-round counter — and Decision 963 effectively adopted the EVN counter.
| Schedule variant | Peak hours (Mon–Sat) | Off-peak | Mon–Sat standard |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pre-963 (in force 2014–22 April 2026) | 09:30–11:30 and 17:00–20:00 — 5h split | 22:00–04:00 | 04:00–09:30, 11:30–17:00, 20:00–22:00 |
| MOIT draft 15 April 2026 — not adopted | Jan–Apr, Sep–Dec: 14:00–19:00 continuous. May–Aug: 14:30–16:30 + 19:30–22:30 split | 00:00–06:00 | Remaining 13h |
| Decision 963 — in force from 22 April 2026 | 17:30–22:30 — 5h continuous evening | 00:00–06:00 | 06:00–17:30 and 22:30–24:00 |
All three variants discussed during the consultation totalled 5 peak hours per day Monday to Saturday. Sundays have no peak hours under any variant. The total peak-hour count was preserved across drafts; what changed in Decision 963 is when those hours fall — consolidated into a single continuous evening block rather than the legacy morning + early-evening split.
What a business-tariff customer should note:
- Hotel and hospitality loads are evening-heavy — dinner service, A/C cooling-down, occupancy lighting — and Decision 963's 17:30–22:30 continuous evening peak falls almost entirely across a hotel's highest-load window. That makes BESS dispatch during that window substantially more valuable than under the pre-963 split schedule, where part of the morning peak (09:30–11:30) sat outside hotel daytime load.
- Data-centre 24/7 flat loads are exposure-neutral to peak timing — a DC pays for peak hours whenever they fall — but solar economics shifted. Had the MOIT seasonal draft prevailed, afternoon rooftop solar (14:00–16:00) would have displaced peak-rate kWh; under the adopted Decision 963 the evening-only peak (17:30–22:30) sits after sunset across most of Vietnam, so direct rooftop solar offsets standard-rate kWh and BESS becomes the route to monetise the evening peak from solar.
- Retail and F&B operators previously ran highest load during the pre-963 09:30–11:30 and 17:00–20:00 peak windows. Decision 963 abolished the morning peak — removing the mid-morning cost spike for breakfast and lunch service — and concentrated the evening peak across dinner-service and after-dinner trading hours. Net effect: morning operations cheaper, dinner-service more exposed.
Status: Decision 963/QĐ-BCT signed and effective 22 April 2026 (Thứ trưởng Nguyễn Hoàng Long). The EVN counter-proposal was effectively adopted; the MOIT seasonal draft was not. Source: Decision 963/QĐ-BCT (1_QD-BCT_2026_963_30f7a_1_.pdf); 15 April 2026 MOIT draft and EVN feedback as reported by Vietnamnet, 15 April 2026.
What this tariff costs in practice
A mid-size third-party data centre post-Circular 60 reclassification
Setup
- LocationThird-party (colocation) data centre, Ho Chi Minh City
- IT load5 MW continuous; PUE 1.35 → total electrical load ≈ 6.75 MW continuous
- Consumption4,600,000 kWh/month (4.6 GWh) — 24/7 operation at ~95% utilisation
- Voltage22 kV
- TOU split18% peak / 57% standard / 25% off-peak — driven by clock hours, not load shape (24/7 flat load)
- TariffDecision 1279/QĐ-BCT · 22 kV business — reclassified from manufacturing 2 Dec 2025 under Circular 60/2025
Monthly bill — all figures VND millions unless noted
| Component | kWh | Rate (VND/kWh) | Bill (VND m) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Peak | 830,556 | 5,025 | 4,174 |
| Standard | 2,619,444 | 2,887 | 7,562 |
| Off-peak | 1,150,000 | 1,609 | 1,850 |
| Total (excl. VAT) | 4,600,000 | blended 2,954 | 13,586 |
| VAT (8%) | 1,087 | ||
| Total (incl. VAT) | 14,673 |
At April 2026 FX (VND 25,500/USD) this is approximately USD 533,000 per month excluding VAT, USD 6.39 million per year. The blended average rate of VND 2,954/kWh is approximately 51% higher than the VND 1,954/kWh a manufacturing site would pay on the same 24/7 load profile — within the 45–55% range reported by industry operators affected by the reclassification. (For reference, a manufacturing site on the canonical Arcus mid-size mfg profile — 25/60/15 TOU split — blends to VND 2,128/kWh at 22 kV; the lower 1,954 figure here reflects the DC's flatter 18/57/25 split against the same manufacturing rate schedule.) The 18/57/25 split is robust to Decision 963: for a 24/7 flat-load profile, peak-hour share = 5h × 6 days ÷ (24h × 7 days) ≈ 17.9% regardless of when the 5h falls in the day, so the consolidation of peak into a continuous 17:30–22:30 evening block does not move the worked-example numbers.
The Circular 60 reclassification delta. The same data centre, before the 2 December 2025 reclassification, paid the manufacturing tariff — peak VND 3,398/kWh, standard VND 1,833, off-peak VND 1,190. At the 4.6 GWh/month profile above, that produces a monthly bill of approximately VND 8.99 bn ex-VAT (≈ USD 353,000/month) — versus VND 13.59 bn ex-VAT on the business tariff. The reclassification delta is approximately VND 4.59 bn/month, or USD 2.16 million per year of incremental electricity cost per 5 MW of IT load. Scaled across the ~221 MW of designed commercial data-centre capacity currently operating in Vietnam, this reconciles with industry estimates of ~VND 1,000 billion/year of sector-wide incremental OpEx.
BESS economics at business-tariff scale. The 22 kV business peak-to-off-peak spread of VND 3,416/kWh (versus VND 2,208/kWh on manufacturing at the same voltage) makes behind-the-meter BESS the dominant hedge against the reclassification. A BESS sized to shave 20% of peak load — roughly 1.35 MW / 2.7 MWh — captures approximately USD 110,000/year of gross arbitrage revenue against a ~USD 513,000 capex at 2026 all-in pricing (CFGE liquid-cooled, $190/kWh installed). Simple arbitrage payback before any demand-charge value: ~4.7 years, compared with ~7 years on an equivalent manufacturing site. See Arcus's BESS calculator → for site-specific modelling.
Scaling to hotels, retail, and offices
Most business-tariff customers outside the data-centre class run materially smaller loads and more peak-concentrated TOU profiles. Rough scaling from the DC archetype:
4★ hotel · 150 rooms · HCMC
~500,000 kWh/month (≈11% of DC profile)
TOU: ~35% peak / ~50% std / ~15% off — evening-dinner-heavy
Monthly bill ≈ VND 1.8 bn ex-VAT (≈ USD 71,000/month)
Note: estimate predates Decision 963; the continuous 17:30–22:30 evening peak likely tightens this further toward ~38% peak share for evening-dinner-heavy hotel loads.
Retail or large F&B · 50–80 kW
~30,000–50,000 kWh/month
TOU: ~30% peak / ~55% std / ~15% off
Monthly bill ≈ VND 100–160 m ex-VAT (≈ USD 4,000–6,000/month)
Office building · 20 floors · mid-scale
~200,000–400,000 kWh/month
TOU: ~30% peak / ~60% std / ~10% off — weekday-business-hours heavy
Monthly bill ≈ VND 700m–1.4 bn ex-VAT
In all three cases the 22 kV business tariff applies and the VND 3,416/kWh peak-to-off-peak spread makes behind-the-meter BESS economically attractive at 4.5–6 years simple arbitrage payback, subject to load shape. Peak-concentrated profiles (retail, F&B, hotels) typically outperform flat profiles (data centres) on arbitrage return per kW installed because a larger share of total consumption sits in the peak window.
Source: Arcus Energy project analysis, indicative 5 MW hyperscale colocation archetype at 22 kV business tariff. Rates: Decision 1279/QĐ-BCT Table 1. Circular 60 reclassification delta calculated as the difference between business and manufacturing tariff bills on the same 24/7 load profile. Scaling paragraphs indicative only — site-specific analysis required for any commercial decision.
How this tariff interacts with BESS economics
The arbitrage spread. Peak-to-off-peak spreads of VND 3,373–3,504/kWh across the three business voltage bands are the widest C&I arbitrage spreads in Vietnam — approximately 55% wider than the manufacturing equivalent at the same voltage. At typical BESS round-trip efficiency of 87% and ~350 cycles per year (daily dispatch less Sundays and maintenance), gross arbitrage revenue per kWh of installed storage at 22 kV business is:
VND 3,416 × 0.87 × 350 ≈ VND 1,040,000/kWh-year ≈ USD 41/kWh-year at April 2026 FX
That's ~58% higher than the USD 26/kWh-year the same BESS would earn on a 22 kV manufacturing tariff.
The payback math. At Rob's April 2026 all-in BESS capex of USD 190/kWh (CFGE liquid-cooled, installed), gross arbitrage payback on the 22 kV business tariff is approximately 4.7 years — versus ~7 years on the manufacturing equivalent. Three reinforcing factors compress this further for business-tariff customers:
- Circular 60 reclassification cost shock creates urgency that manufacturing customers don't face — the business-tariff customer is hedging an actual cost increase, not a theoretical arbitrage. For reclassified data centres specifically, BESS is the most direct mechanism to recover the 45–55% cost jump from the reclassification.
- Pending retail tariff uplift via the Decree 72 amendment on EVN loss recovery (projected Q2–Q3 2026) would widen the absolute VND/kWh spread proportionally, lifting arbitrage returns further.
- Decision 963/QĐ-BCT (effective 22 April 2026) consolidated peak hours into a 5-hour continuous evening window, 17:30–22:30 Mon–Sat (see §5.2 above). This is the ideal standalone-storage dispatch profile — a single continuous block, falling almost entirely across hotel, retail, and F&B highest-load hours. The earlier pre-963 split (09:30–11:30 + 17:00–20:00) required two dispatch cycles to capture both peak windows; Decision 963's single continuous block is served by one off-peak charge → one peak discharge per day.
Who this works for at business tariff: hotels with 60+ rooms and meaningful A/C load; third-party data centres with 2+ MW IT load post-reclassification; retail and F&B chains with 50+ kW peak demand; office landlords managing multi-tenant buildings with predictable weekday profiles. Below these thresholds, the capex-payback math compresses quickly.
See Arcus's BESS calculator → for a site-specific payback model.
Frequently asked questions
What is the business electricity tariff in Vietnam?
Vietnam's business (kinh doanh) electricity tariff ranges from VND 5,025/kWh peak at ≥22 kV to VND 5,422/kWh peak at <6 kV, with standard rates of VND 2,887–3,152/kWh and off-peak rates of VND 1,609–1,918/kWh, all excluding VAT. These rates are set under Decision 1279/QĐ-BCT issued by MOIT and have been in force since 10 May 2025.
Why do third-party data centres now pay the business tariff?
Circular 60/2025/TT-BCT (effective 2 December 2025) reclassified third-party (colocation and hyperscale) data centres from the manufacturing tariff to the business tariff. The reclassification raises blended electricity cost by approximately 45–55%, equivalent to VND 1,000+ billion/year of incremental industry OpEx. Captive data centres serving only internal operations remain on manufacturing. Mixed-use facilities are allocated proportionally.
What is the peak-to-off-peak arbitrage spread on the business tariff?
The peak-to-off-peak arbitrage spread on the business tariff ranges from VND 3,373/kWh at 6–<22 kV to VND 3,504/kWh at <6 kV, excluding VAT. At 22 kV — where most large commercial customers connect — the spread is VND 3,416/kWh, approximately 55% wider than the manufacturing tariff at the same voltage and the widest C&I arbitrage spread in Vietnam. Decision 963/QĐ-BCT (22 April 2026) consolidated peak hours into a 5-hour continuous evening window (17:30–22:30 Mon–Sat) — the spread itself is unchanged but the dispatch window is now continuous and longer than the pre-963 split (09:30–11:30 + 17:00–20:00).
Does the July 2026 two-part tariff pilot apply to business customers?
No. The pilot under Decree 146/2025/NĐ-CP covers approximately 7,000 large manufacturing customers at ≥22 kV consuming ≥200,000 kWh/month. Extension to business-tariff customers (hotels, offices, third-party data centres) is expected in the 2028–2030 timeframe but not confirmed. For now a business customer pays only the energy charges shown, with no capacity component.
How does the business tariff compare to the manufacturing tariff at the same voltage?
At 22 kV the business tariff is materially higher than manufacturing — VND 5,025 vs 3,398/kWh at peak (+48%), VND 1,609 vs 1,190/kWh at off-peak (+35%). The peak-to-off-peak spread is VND 3,416 vs 2,208/kWh (+55%). This matters because Circular 60/2025/TT-BCT moved third-party data centres from manufacturing to business classification in December 2025. TOU windows are identical across both customer classes — restructured by Decision 963/QĐ-BCT effective 22 April 2026 to a 5-hour continuous evening peak (17:30–22:30 Mon–Sat) with off-peak 00:00–06:00.