Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) is to cut electricity rates by an average of 9.56 percent, or NT$0.2693 (US$0.08) per kilowatt-hour (kWh), to reflect lower power generation costs due to continued falling international crude oil prices.
The price cuts are the biggest in the nation’s history, according to Taipower’s data.
“Given low global crude oil prices, the electricity review committee said that there is room for Taipower to lower its average electricity rates,” Vice Minister of Economic Affairs Shen Jong-chin (沈榮津) told a press conference in Taipei.
The committee yesterday said that Taipower should lower average electricity rates from NT$2.8181 to NT$2.5488 per kilowatt-hour effective April 1, Shen said.
Bureau of Energy Director-General Lin Chuan-neng (林全能), a member of the committee, said the scale of the price cut was calculated based on the forecast average cost of US$40.15 per barrel for crude oil in the next six months compared with US$51 per barrel in October last year.
According to the new pricing scheme, about 4 million households using 330kWh or less per month would see their electricity bills drop by NT$80 per month, Taipower said.
Smaller-scale restaurants and shops that use 1,480kWh per month could see price reductions of NT$517, while large department stores with 9,600kWh electricity usage would see electricity bills cut by NT$3,378 per month, the state-run utility said.
As for industrial users that use about 1,500kWh, they are expected to see an average price reduction of nearly NT$400,000 per month, Taipower said.
After the price adjustments, the average electricity rate of NT$2.5488 per kilowatt-hour will be cheaper than the NT$2.6001 per kilowatt-hour recorded in 2011, the company said.
Lin said that the nation’s electricity prices for households are the third cheapest in the world, while the industrial electricity rates are the fourth lowest worldwide.
Also at the meeting, the committee agreed to set up an account to deposit NT$34 billion from Taipower’s profits last year.
The company made NT$61.8 billion last year, exceeding the electricity pricing formula’s “reasonable profit” by NT$34 billion, it said.
Lin said 14 out of the 17 committee members proposed setting up a special account for the funds to allow Taipower to absorb increases in power generation costs without having to raise electricity rates.
The committee is set to discuss the details of the plan in June, Lin added.
Taichung reported the steepest fall in completed home prices among the six special municipalities in the first quarter of this year, data compiled by Taiwan Realty Co (台灣房屋) showed yesterday. From January through last month, the average transaction price for completed homes in Taichung fell 8 percent from a year earlier to NT$299,000 (US$9,483) per ping (3.3m²), said Taiwan Realty, which compiled the data based on the government’s price registration platform. The decline could be attributed to many home buyers choosing relatively affordable used homes to live in themselves, instead of newly built homes in the city’s prime property market, Taiwan Realty
The government yesterday approved applications by Alphabet Inc’s Google to invest NT$27.08 billion (US$859.98 million) in Taiwan, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said in a statement. The Department of Investment Review approved two investments proposed by Google, with much of the funds to be used for data processing and electronic information supply services, as well as inventory procurement businesses in the semiconductor field, the ministry said. It marks the second consecutive year that Google has applied to increase its investment in Taiwan. Google plans to infuse NT$25.34 billion into Charter Investments Ltd (特許投資顧問) through its Singapore-based subsidiary Fructan Holdings Singapore Pte Ltd, and
JET JUICE: The war on Iran’s secondary effects have seen fuel prices skyrocket, knocking flight schedules down to earth in return as airlines struggle with costs Airline passengers should brace for more irritation in the next few months as carriers worldwide cancel flights and ground planes to cope with stratospheric increases in jet-fuel prices. Dutch flag carrier KLM is the latest company to cut its schedule, saying on Thursday that it would scrap 80 return flights at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport in the coming month. That puts it in the same league as United Airlines Holdings Inc, Deutsche Lufthansa AG and Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd, which have all pruned itineraries to mitigate costs. Global capacity for next month has been reduced by about 3 percentage points, with all
FORESEEABLE CONSEQUENCES: New technology always comes with new innovations by the iniquitous in exploiting users for financial gain or more nefarious ends Artificial intelligence (AI) “agents” say they can save users time and energy by automating tasks, but the growing power of systems such as OpenClaw is putting cybersecurity experts on edge. Powered by a wave of hype, OpenClaw today says it has more than three million users worldwide. The system allows users to create so-called agents, tools based on a large language model (LLM) such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Anthropic PBC’s Claude, that can carry out online tasks. “We’ve moved from an AI you could talk with via a chatbot to an agentic AI, which can take action... the threat and the risks are
RSS