Taiwan’s biggest power company, telecom operator and IT firms are designing metering and communication systems to link air conditioners and lighting systems with computers and mobile phones.
Efficiency gains from the scheme could save millions of tonnes of carbon emissions.
The technologies will enable property owners to set “energy budgets” for their buildings, send electricity price change updates to consumers via cable TV or mobile phone and let telecoms firms start providing power optimization services.
These systems are likely to be crucial to recently announced moves in the UK, the US and China to build “smart grids,” because Taiwan develops and manufactures many of the world’s electronic chips and components.
Taiwan Power (台電), the nation’s utility, will launch a small-scale research study of less than 100 homes that will be rapidly expanded to tens of thousands of homes in the next two or three years.
“Taiwan is the place to do this because we already have a strong information infrastructure and we can manufacture fast and at low cost,” a government official said.
She estimated that the country could save 10 percent of its energy simply by switching off idle devices and another 10 percent to 20 percent through better management of air conditioning.
“Human beings are lazy,” the official said. “If you make adjustments automatically, then you can save a great deal.”
In trials, Taiwan Power is experimenting with wireless devices so smart meters can communicate with all the devices in a house.
Ho Wu-chi of the Industrial Technology Research Institute said Taiwan aims to develop a two-way system of communication between electricity suppliers and users.
Consumers will receive frequent updates of price fluctuations so they can trim usage at peak times. While the UK aims to do this through dedicated displays in each house, Taiwan wants to do it more cheaply by using existing devices such as cable TV, mobile phones and computers.
“We are putting in place a smart meter policy. If we want to go into the international market, we have to show first that we can do it ourselves,” Ho said.
Within five years, he said that more than 5 million smart meters would be installed at a cost of NT$50 billion (US$1.55 billion).
In the international market, the business potential is enormous. For each of the next 30 years, Ho estimates the world will need 30 million meters, each retailing for between US$50 and US$100.
Apple Inc increased iPhone production in India by about 53 percent last year and now makes a quarter of its marquee devices there, reflecting the US company’s efforts to avoid tariffs on China. The company assembled about 55 million iPhones in India last year, up from 36 million a year earlier, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be named because the numbers aren’t public. Apple makes about 220 million to 230 million iPhones a year globally, with India’s share of the total increasing rapidly. Apple has accelerated its expansion in the world’s most populous country in recent years, bolstered
HEADWINDS: The company said it expects its computer business, as well as consumer electronics and communications segments to see revenue declines due to seasonality Pegatron Corp (和碩) yesterday said it aims to grow its artificial intelligence (AI) server revenue more than 10-fold this year from last year, driven by orders from neocloud solutions clients and large cloud service providers. The electronics manufacturing service provider said AI server revenue growth would be driven primarily by the Nvidia Corp GB300 server platform. Server shipments are expected to increase each quarter this year, with the second half likely to outperform the first half, it said. The AI server market is expected to broaden this year as more inference applications emerge, which would drive demand for system-on-chip, application-specific integrated circuits
Chinese entrepreneur Frank Gao used to spend long hours running his social media accounts but now outsources the chore to artificial intelligence (AI) agent tool OpenClaw, which is taking China by storm despite official warnings over cybersecurity. OpenClaw, created in November by an Austrian coder, differs from bots such as ChatGPT because it can execute real-life tasks such as sending e-mails, organizing files or even booking flight tickets. “Since January, I’ve spent hours on the lobster every day,” Gao said in an interview, referring to OpenClaw’s red crustacean mascot. “We’re family.” After downloading OpenClaw, users connect it to artificial intelligence models of their
At a massive shipyard in North Vancouver, Canadian workers grind metal beams for a powerful new icebreaker crucial to cementing the country’s presence in the increasingly contested arctic. Icebreakers are specialized, expensive vessels able to navigate in the frozen far north. And “this is the crown jewel,” said Eddie Schehr, vice president of production at the Seaspan shipyard. For Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, who heads to Norway next Friday to observe arctic defense drills involving troops from 14 NATO states, Canada’s extreme north has emerged as a strategic priority. “Canada is and forever will be an Arctic nation,” he said ahead of
RSS