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.
RECYCLE: Taiwan would aid manufacturers in refining rare earths from discarded appliances, which would fit the nation’s circular economy goals, minister Kung said Taiwan would work with the US and Japan on a proposed cooperation initiative in response to Beijing’s newly announced rare earth export curbs, Minister of Economic Affairs Kung Ming-hsin (龔明鑫) said yesterday. China last week announced new restrictions requiring companies to obtain export licenses if their products contain more than 0.1 percent of Chinese-origin rare earths by value. US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent on Wednesday responded by saying that Beijing was “unreliable” in its rare earths exports, adding that the US would “neither be commanded, nor controlled” by China, several media outlets reported. Japanese Minister of Finance Katsunobu Kato yesterday also
Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), founder and CEO of US-based artificial intelligence chip designer Nvidia Corp and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) on Friday celebrated the first Nvidia Blackwell wafer produced on US soil. Huang visited TSMC’s advanced wafer fab in the US state of Arizona and joined the Taiwanese chipmaker’s executives to witness the efforts to “build the infrastructure that powers the world’s AI factories, right here in America,” Nvidia said in a statement. At the event, Huang joined Y.L. Wang (王英郎), vice president of operations at TSMC, in signing their names on the Blackwell wafer to
‘DRAMATIC AND POSITIVE’: AI growth would be better than it previously forecast and would stay robust even if the Chinese market became inaccessible for customers, it said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday raised its full-year revenue growth outlook after posting record profit for last quarter, despite growing market concern about an artificial intelligence (AI) bubble. The company said it expects revenue to expand about 35 percent year-on-year, driven mainly by faster-than-expected demand for leading-edge chips for AI applications. The world’s biggest contract chipmaker in July projected that revenue this year would expand about 30 percent in US dollar terms. The company also slightly hiked its capital expenditure for this year to US$40 billion to US$42 billion, compared with US$38 billion to US$42 billion it set previously. “AI demand actually
RARE EARTHS: The call between the US Treasury Secretary and his Chinese counterpart came as Washington sought to rally G7 partners in response to China’s export controls China and the US on Saturday agreed to conduct another round of trade negotiations in the coming week, as the world’s two biggest economies seek to avoid another damaging tit-for-tat tariff battle. Beijing last week announced sweeping controls on the critical rare earths industry, prompting US President Donald Trump to threaten 100 percent tariffs on imports from China in retaliation. Trump had also threatened to cancel his expected meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in South Korea later this month on the sidelines of the APEC summit. In the latest indication of efforts to resolve their dispute, Chinese state media reported that
RSS