State-run Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) yesterday held a groundbreaking ceremony for a new solar power plant at the Changhua Coastal Industrial Park (彰濱工業區), with company officials saying they expect the plant to start operations before the end of the year at the earliest,
The facility, with an installed capacity of 100 megawatts, would be capable of generating 130 million kilowatt-hours of electricity per year, supplying power to more than 30,000 households, Taipower said in a statement.
The 150-hectare site, which was originally set to house a coal-fired power plant, will be transformed into the nation’s largest ground-mounted solar system, it said.
It would be the world’s 54th-largest solar plant, it said.
Batteries and equipment at the site would all be made by Taiwanese companies, Taipower chairman Yang Wei-fuu (楊偉甫) said, adding that the Changhua plant would be benchmark power project for the nation.
Electricity generated by the plant would mainly be used to supply power domestically, Yang said, but added that the government is open to the idea of selling the “green” power to foreign companies.
Besides installing 339,000 solar panels at the site, Taipower is also building step-up substations at the site to store electricity generated from offshore wind farms along Changhua’s coast.
Capital expenditure for the Changhua project is expected to reach nearly NT$6.2 billion (US$211 million), Taipower said.
The company said it has awarded the contract to Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信), which has undertaken more than 400 solar power projects nationwide.
Given its geographical advantages, Changhua County’s solar power industry last year produced more than 200 million kilowatt-hours of electricity, contributing nearly 15 percent to the nation’s total solar power generation, Taipower data showed.
Apart from Changhua, Taipower said it is planning to build a solar power plant in Tainan, with an installed capacity of 150 megawatts.
Construction of the Tainan plant is to begin in the middle of this year, Taipower said.
The solar power projects are in line with the company’s plan to accelerate the development of renewable energy in the nation and meet the government’s goal of phasing out nuclear power by 2025, Taipower said.
On Wednesday, Danish energy company Orsted A/S announced that it is teaming up with several Taiwanese firms to invest between NT$50 million and NT$200 million to build a 1-megawatt energy storage facility Changhua, the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) reported.
UNCERTAINTIES: Exports surged 34.1% and private investment grew 7.03% to outpace expectations in the first half, although US tariffs could stall momentum The Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) yesterday raised its GDP growth forecast to 3.05 percent this year on a robust first-half performance, but warned that US tariff threats and external uncertainty could stall momentum in the second half of the year. “The first half proved exceptionally strong, allowing room for optimism,” CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said. “But the growth momentum may slow moving forward due to US tariffs.” The tariff threat poses definite downside risks, although the scale of the impact remains unclear given the unpredictability of US President Donald Trump’s policies, Lien said. Despite the headwinds, Taiwan is likely
When Lika Megreladze was a child, life in her native western Georgian region of Guria revolved around tea. Her mother worked for decades as a scientist at the Soviet Union’s Institute of Tea and Subtropical Crops in the village of Anaseuli, Georgia, perfecting cultivation methods for a Georgian tea industry that supplied the bulk of the vast communist state’s brews. “When I was a child, this was only my mum’s workplace. Only later I realized that it was something big,” she said. Now, the institute lies abandoned. Yellowed papers are strewn around its decaying corridors, and a statue of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin
READY TO BUY: Shortly after Nvidia announced the approval, Chinese firms scrambled to order the H20 GPUs, which the company must send to the US government for approval Nvidia Corp chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) late on Monday said the technology giant has won approval from US President Donald Trump’s administration to sell its advanced H20 graphics processing units (GPUs) used to develop artificial intelligence (AI) to China. The news came in a company blog post late on Monday and Huang also spoke about the coup on China’s state-run China Global Television Network in remarks shown on X. “The US government has assured Nvidia that licenses will be granted, and Nvidia hopes to start deliveries soon,” the post said. “Today, I’m announcing that the US government has approved for us
UNIFYING OPPOSITION: Numerous companies have registered complaints over the potential levies, bringing together rival automakers in voicing their reservations US President Donald Trump is readying plans for industry-specific tariffs to kick in alongside his country-by-country duties in two weeks, ramping up his push to reshape the US’ standing in the global trading system by penalizing purchases from abroad. Administration officials could release details of Trump’s planned 50 percent duty on copper in the days before they are set to take effect on Friday next week, a person familiar with the matter said. That is the same date Trump’s “reciprocal” levies on products from more than 100 nations are slated to begin. Trump on Tuesday said that he is likely to impose tariffs