Renewable energy suppliers will soon be able to apply for distribution permits to speed up the development of nation’s renewable energy industry, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday.
“Power distributors will be able to start applying for permits to transmit and distribute power from renewable energy suppliers to customers at the end of next month at the earliest,” Bureau of Energy official Lee Chih-yuan (李志遠) told reporters at the ministry.
Renewable energy suppliers can finally start selling electricity to customers, Lee added.
The legislature in January passed the amended Electricity Act (電業法), which allows renewable energy suppliers to sell electricity to enterprises and households, instead of only selling power to Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電).
Under the amended regulations, distributors would pay less when using Taipower’s grid if they are transmitting renewable energy.
The ministry yesterday approved the discount ranges, Lee said.
For instance, the fee for transmitting solar power on Taipower’s grid is to be NT$0.0108 to NT$0.0169 per kilowatt-hour (kWh), compared with NT$0.2861 to NT$0.4462 per kWh for coal-fired electricity, Lee said.
Renewable energy suppliers can also choose to build their own direct lines, for which they are only required to pay power dispatching and assisted service fees to Taipower, Lee said.
Lee said the ministry would review and adjust the pricing mechanism for renewable and non-renewable energy sources on an annual basis.
The US dollar was trading at NT$29.7 at 10am today on the Taipei Foreign Exchange, as the New Taiwan dollar gained NT$1.364 from the previous close last week. The NT dollar continued to rise today, after surging 3.07 percent on Friday. After opening at NT$30.91, the NT dollar gained more than NT$1 in just 15 minutes, briefly passing the NT$30 mark. Before the US Department of the Treasury's semi-annual currency report came out, expectations that the NT dollar would keep rising were already building. The NT dollar on Friday closed at NT$31.064, up by NT$0.953 — a 3.07 percent single-day gain. Today,
‘SHORT TERM’: The local currency would likely remain strong in the near term, driven by anticipated US trade pressure, capital inflows and expectations of a US Fed rate cut The US dollar is expected to fall below NT$30 in the near term, as traders anticipate increased pressure from Washington for Taiwan to allow the New Taiwan dollar to appreciate, Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行) chief economist Lin Chi-chao (林啟超) said. Following a sharp drop in the greenback against the NT dollar on Friday, Lin told the Central News Agency that the local currency is likely to remain strong in the short term, driven in part by market psychology surrounding anticipated US policy pressure. On Friday, the US dollar fell NT$0.953, or 3.07 percent, closing at NT$31.064 — its lowest level since Jan.
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The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday met with some of the nation’s largest insurance companies as a skyrocketing New Taiwan dollar piles pressure on their hundreds of billions of dollars in US bond investments. The commission has asked some life insurance firms, among the biggest Asian holders of US debt, to discuss how the rapidly strengthening NT dollar has impacted their operations, people familiar with the matter said. The meeting took place as the NT dollar jumped as much as 5 percent yesterday, its biggest intraday gain in more than three decades. The local currency surged as exporters rushed to
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