The Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) yesterday announced a project to encourage households in Taiwan to install solar panels on the roofs of their homes.
Under the new measures, local governments would work with private-sector firms, which would organize households in designated areas and build solar panels for them in an attempt to reach a fixed level of power production under the ministry’s supervision.
The ministry said the project has designated three sizes of solar panels to be installed: 10 megawatts (MW) to 50MW for several administrative districts in a single city or county, 1MW to 10MW for a single administrative district in a city or a county, and 0.5MW to 1MW for a township.
The minimum paid-in capital for operators interested in the power generation projects would be NT$300 million, NT$30 million and NT$10 million (US$10.24 million, US$1.02 million and US$341,277), respectively, to ensure that the programs run smoothly, the ministry added.
Once an operator organizes households under its umbrella and secures regulatory approval, state-owned electricity supplier Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) would buy electricity from the operator at NT$6.4137 per kilowatt-hour.
After the purchase, the operator would pay 10 percent of the payment to the participating households and 30 percent to the local government.
The money received by local governments would be exclusively used for “green” energy development, the ministry said.
The solar power generation project is to run through August next year, the ministry said.
However, there would also be a pilot program with local governments recruited to serve as models for their counterparts still considering the program, it said.
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