Taiwan Cogeneration Corp (台汽電) yesterday said three of the company’s power-generation subsidiaries had settled legal disputes with state-run Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電).
Taiwan Cogeneration said in a statement to the Taiwan Stock Exchange that three independent power producers (IPPs) under its purview had reach new agreements with Taipower over the terms of electricity purchase contracts.
“Star Energy Corp (星能電力), Sun Ba Power Corp (森霸電力) and Kuang Power Co (國光電力) have respectively settled their cases with Taipower today at the Taipei District Court,” Taiwan Cogeneration vice president Henry Wu (吳宏能) said in the statement.
Wu said the IPPs had reached new pacts in accordance with a draft proposal approved by Taiwan Cogeneration’s board on Nov. 22 last year.
Taiwan Cogeneration did not disclose the terms of the new contracts, nor did it say whether the fourth IPP subsidiary, Hsing Yuan Power Corp (星元電力), would follow suit soon. Taiwan Cogeneration holds a 35 percent stake in Star Energy, 32.5 percent of Sun Ba, 35 percent of Kuo Kuang and 33.67 percent of Hsing Yuan.
The company is itself a Taipower subsidiary.
The state-run utility filed lawsuits against the four IPPs in October last year after negotiations on adjusting the terms of their contracts broke down after several rounds.
Taipower’s move came after the legislature’s Economics Committee slashed NT$9.5 billion from a budget of NT$142.68 billion that the utility had allocated for purchasing electricity from businesses using cogeneration systems and from IPPs this year.
In other news, Taipower said it planned to formally apply to the Atomic Energy Council in February or March next year to fill the reactors of the yet-to-be-completed Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in Gongliao District (貢寮), New Taipei City (新北市), with uranium fuel.
Taipower may start commercial operations of the controversial power plant in 2015 at the earliest.
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Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
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