Lower-than-average rainfall across the nation in the past few months has added pressure on the electricity supply this year, as output from hydroelectric power plants has diminished, Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) said yesterday.
“This is going to be a more challenging year than last,” Taipower chairman Chu Wen-chen (朱文成) told reporters on the sidelines of a media event in Taipei.
Given that reactor No. 1 at the Guosheng Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City’s Wanli District (萬里) has suspended operations since June last year due to a lack of space for storing used radioactive rods, a sufficient hydroelectricity supply would play an important role in supporting peak demand during the summer, Chu said.
Photo: CNA
The hydroelectric plants accounted for 2.6 percent of the nation’s total electricity capacity last year, with more than half generated from the Dajia River (大甲溪) in central Taiwan, Chu said.
He said it is problematic because the constrained supply would only be alleviated if rain falls in the Dajia River basin.
The Water Resources Agency on Feb. 3 turned the water supply indicators for Taoyuan and New Taipei City’s Linkou (林口), Sinjhuang (新莊) and Banciao (板橋) districts from “blue” to “green,” suggesting that supply is tight.
The agency on Monday also turned the indicators for Hsinchu and Kaohsiung to “green.”
The Ministry of Economic Affairs is to convene a meeting on Tuesday next week to decide whether to carry out first-stage water rationing at the Shihmen Reservoir (石門水庫) in northern Taiwan, which serves mainly Taoyuan and the aforementioned districts of New Taipei City.
In an effort to prevent shortages this summer, the annual examinations of Taipower’s generators would be completed before May 20, 10 days earlier than last year, Chu said.
The company last year finished the examinations on June 1, while the nation faced its highest daily electricity demand and lowest operating reserve margin of 1.64 percent on May 31, Taipower data showed.
Two emergency generation units at the Datan Natural Gas Power Plant in Taoyuan are expected to begin operations on July 1, Chu said.
Taipower has also signed a two-year contract with EnerNOC Inc and it expects the collaboration with the NASDAQ-listed energy aggregator would help it reduce the demand from its 86 enterprise users whenever the operating reserve margin drops below 6 percent, he said.
The US firm would leverage its technologies and “smart” metering systems to reduce demand when Taipower notifies it that supply is tight, he said.
The measures could increase the operating reserve margin by 0.5 percentage points, he added.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
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],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day