Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電), expects electricity demand to increase at the slowest pace in seven years this year because of the global recession and higher prices.
Taiwan’s electricity demand will probably grow less than 2 percent, the least since the 0.9 percent gain in 2001, chief engineer Tu Yueh-yuan (杜悅元), said in an interview in Taipei yesterday.
The state-run utility raised prices by an average of 25.2 percent this year to cover higher fuel costs.
Slowing electricity sales at Taipower will reduce fuel purchases by Asia’s largest thermal coal importer and the nation’s biggest user of natural gas. The global financial crisis is hurting sales of computers and mobile phones, trimming demand for semiconductors produced in Taiwan and cutting power use by factories.
“Growth is slowing,” Tu said. “We’re in this economic tsunami, which is prompting technology companies to cut output.”
Taipower’s power sales increased 1.5 percent in the 10 months to last month, Tu said. That’s slower than the average 4.4 percent annual growth over the last five years, the company’s Web site shows.
Industrial users account for 60 percent to 70 percent of Taipower’s sales, Tu said. The state-utility is Taiwan’s only electricity retailer.
“It was just miserable for industrial users in October,” he said.
Taiwan’s industrial output fell 1.39 percent from a year earlier in September, the first decline since March last year, a report by the Ministry of Economic Affairs showed on Oct. 23.
Increased power prices have encouraged consumers to cut back on electricity use, contributing to slower demand growth, Tu said.
The government allowed Taipower to increase electricity rates as losses at the utility widened because of surging coal and natural gas costs.
The company may post a loss of NT$190 billion (US$5.7 billion) next year, wider than the NT$105 billion projected for this year, because the increases aren’t enough to cover costs, Clint Chou (周義岳), a Taipower spokesman, said Oct. 1.
Taiwan paid an average US$773 a tonne for liquefied natural gas in the period, 42 percent higher than a year earlier, a report by the ministry showed.
The state-run utility will probably use 4.38 million tonnes of gas this year, less than the 5.58 million tonnes forecast previously, as demand for electricity wanes, Tu said on Aug. 12.
The government owns 97 percent of the utility, which generates about 75 percent of the electricity the nation uses and monopolizes transmission.
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