Minister of Economic Affairs Lin Yi-fu (林義夫) announced yesterday that electricity rates for the summer months will drop by a bigger margin and that one rate level will be added to the existing three levels.
Lin made the announcement after he led officials of the state-owned Taiwan Power Co (Tai-power, 台電) in making a report to the DPP legislative caucus about its rate-cut proposal.
Presently there are three rate levels: those who use less than 110 kilowatt hours, those who use between 110 kilowatt hours and 330 kilowatt hours and those who use more than 331 kilowatt hours. A level between 331 kilowatt hours and 500 kilowatt hours will now be added.
Under the new system, a household using fewer than 110 kwh per month would pay NT$0.2 less to NT$2 per kilowatt-hour (kwh). Those using between 110kwh and 330kwh per month would pay NT$0.1 less to NT$2.6 per kilowatt-hour. Usage between the 331kwh to 500kwh per month will be subject to NT$3.3 per kilowatt hour, which will be cut by NT$0.1 per kilowatt-hour. For users in the over-500kwh bracket, the rate will remain the same at NT$3.3 per kilowatt-hour.
Lin said that the new rates will be retroactive to June 1, the start of summer electricity rates.
DPP Legislator Chao Yung-ching (趙永清) said that Taipower has a bigger surplus than expected every year and should be able to afford to cut its rates.
Chao also asked that the off-peak time span should begin earlier than 10:30pm. Taipower officials said that this would result in losses of between NT$5 billion and NT$6 billion (US$144.92 million to US$173.91 million) and would need further study.
Elon Musk’s lieutenants have reached out to chip industry suppliers, including Applied Materials Inc, Tokyo Electron Ltd and Lam Research Corp, for his envisioned Terafab, early steps in an audacious and likely arduous attempt to break into the production of cutting-edge chips. Staff working for the joint venture between Tesla Inc and Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX) have sought price quotes and delivery times for an array of chipmaking gear, people familiar with the matter said. In past weeks, they’ve contacted makers of photomasks, substrates, etchers, depositors, cleaning devices, testers and other tools, according to the people, who asked not to
Taichung reported the steepest fall in completed home prices among the six special municipalities in the first quarter of this year, data compiled by Taiwan Realty Co (台灣房屋) showed yesterday. From January through last month, the average transaction price for completed homes in Taichung fell 8 percent from a year earlier to NT$299,000 (US$9,483) per ping (3.3m²), said Taiwan Realty, which compiled the data based on the government’s price registration platform. The decline could be attributed to many home buyers choosing relatively affordable used homes to live in themselves, instead of newly built homes in the city’s prime property market, Taiwan Realty
JET JUICE: The war on Iran’s secondary effects have seen fuel prices skyrocket, knocking flight schedules down to earth in return as airlines struggle with costs Airline passengers should brace for more irritation in the next few months as carriers worldwide cancel flights and ground planes to cope with stratospheric increases in jet-fuel prices. Dutch flag carrier KLM is the latest company to cut its schedule, saying on Thursday that it would scrap 80 return flights at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport in the coming month. That puts it in the same league as United Airlines Holdings Inc, Deutsche Lufthansa AG and Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd, which have all pruned itineraries to mitigate costs. Global capacity for next month has been reduced by about 3 percentage points, with all
Taiwan is attracting a growing number of foreign jobseekers as companies increasingly recruit overseas talent to ease labor shortages and expand global reach, recruitment platform 104 Job Bank (104人力銀行) said yesterday. More than 40,000 foreign nationals searched for jobs in Taiwan through the platform last year, a 28 percent increase from a year earlier, the company said. Malaysians accounted for the largest share of overseas jobseekers at 12.2 percent, followed by Indonesians at 11.9 percent and Vietnamese at 10.8 percent. Indonesian applicants surged more than 50 percent year-on-year, while Vietnamese jobseekers rose by more than 30 percent. Applicants from the
RSS