Taiwan Power Co (Taipower,
The government has demanded that electricity generated from renewable sources, including hydraulic, wind and solar power, should account for 10 percent of domestic supply by 2011, up from the present 5.45 percent, with wind-generated electricity totalling an estimated 216 megawatts.
"As hydraulic power is nearly saturated here after decades of development and solar power is not really commercially viable, wind power is the most potential source of clean energy for the decade ahead," said Chen Wu-hsiung (
Taipower, which currently has 30 wind turbines with a total 5.4 megawatts' capacity, is planning to build another 200 wind turbines on Taiwan and the island of Penghu in the Taiwan Strait before the end of 2010.
Each turbine costs at least NT$100 million.
"But after the project is completed, there will be few land sites left for the construction of wind turbines and more turbines will have to be built offshore," Chen said.
Taipower plans to build 546 offshore turbines, each with a capacity of 3.6 megawatts from 2010-2020. Each of those turbines will cost an estimated NT$200 million.
Out of the 546, 176 would be built off Penghu, which Chen said is one of the best wind farms in the world. Electricity would be transmitted to Taiwan through 40km undersea cables.
The rest of the planned offshore turbines would be located some 10-15 kilometers off the western counties of Changhwa and Yunlin.
The call for diversified energy sources has grown as crude oil prices continue to rise. Taiwan imports nearly all of its energy needs.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by