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.
SEMICONDUCTORS: The German laser and plasma generator company will expand its local services as its specialized offerings support Taiwan’s semiconductor industries Trumpf SE + Co KG, a global leader in supplying laser technology and plasma generators used in chip production, is expanding its investments in Taiwan in an effort to deeply integrate into the global semiconductor supply chain in the pursuit of growth. The company, headquartered in Ditzingen, Germany, has invested significantly in a newly inaugurated regional technical center for plasma generators in Taoyuan, its latest expansion in Taiwan after being engaged in various industries for more than 25 years. The center, the first of its kind Trumpf built outside Germany, aims to serve customers from Taiwan, Japan, Southeast Asia and South Korea,
Nvidia Corp chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) on Monday introduced the company’s latest supercomputer platform, featuring six new chips made by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), saying that it is now “in full production.” “If Vera Rubin is going to be in time for this year, it must be in production by now, and so, today I can tell you that Vera Rubin is in full production,” Huang said during his keynote speech at CES in Las Vegas. The rollout of six concurrent chips for Vera Rubin — the company’s next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) computing platform — marks a strategic
Gasoline and diesel prices at domestic fuel stations are to fall NT$0.2 per liter this week, down for a second consecutive week, CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) and Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) announced yesterday. Effective today, gasoline prices at CPC and Formosa stations are to drop to NT$26.4, NT$27.9 and NT$29.9 per liter for 92, 95 and 98-octane unleaded gasoline respectively, the companies said in separate statements. The price of premium diesel is to fall to NT$24.8 per liter at CPC stations and NT$24.6 at Formosa pumps, they said. The price adjustments came even as international crude oil prices rose last week, as traders
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which supplies advanced chips to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday reported NT$1.046 trillion (US$33.1 billion) in revenue for last quarter, driven by constantly strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips, falling in the upper end of its forecast. Based on TSMC’s financial guidance, revenue would expand about 22 percent sequentially to the range from US$32.2 billion to US$33.4 billion during the final quarter of 2024, it told investors in October last year. Last year in total, revenue jumped 31.61 percent to NT$3.81 trillion, compared with NT$2.89 trillion generated in the year before, according to
RSS