The nation’s power supply is expected to gradually stabilize next week when independent power producer Ho-Ping Power Co (和平電力) resumes operations, a Ministry of Economic Affairs official said yesterday.
The repair work at a damaged Ho-Ping Power transmission tower in Yilan County’s Dongao (東澳) is proceeding smoothly and the Ho-Ping Power Plant would be able to run at half capacity from Monday, supplying 650,000 kilowatts (kW) of electricity per day, Bureau of Energy Deputy Director-General Lee Chun-li (李君禮) said.
The power plant should be running at full capacity by Friday next week, supplying 1.3 gigawatts per day, Lee said.
Photo: CNA, courtesy of the Ministry of Economic Affairs
As a result, the alert levels for Taiwan’s power supply would be lowered next week to “orange” or “yellow,” he said.
However, the power supply signaled a “red” alert yesterday when electricity usage peaked at 36.41 gigawatts at 1:54pm, about 30,000kW higher than Taiwan Power Co’s (Taipower, 台電) estimate, the state-run utility said yesterday.
A “red” alert indicates that the electricity operating reserve has fallen below 900,000kW, Taipower said, adding that yesterday’s operating reserve dropped to 643,000kW, or a margin of 1.77 percent.
Under Taipower’s color-coded electricity supply warning system, “green” means operating reserve margin is above 10 percent, “yellow” represents a margin of between 10 and 6 percent, while “orange” indicates that the margin is below 6 percent.
A “black” alert indicates the reserves have fallen to less than 500,000kW and power rationing has become necessary.
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