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.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by