The number of wind turbines along the west coast is now more than 100 and the renewable energy generated by these units should be sufficient to prevent emissions of 250,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide every year, energy officials said yesterday.
During a ceremony at the Changhua Coastal Industrial Park to promote the use and efficiency of wind power, officials from the Bureau of Energy under the Ministry of Economic Affairs said the 103 giant wind turbines located at 13 wind farms along the west coast can generate 420 million kilowatt-hours of electricity a year -- enough energy to power as many as 105,000 households.
The windmills were established by Taiwan Power (Taipower), the private-run Tien-Lung Paper and InfraVest Wind Power Group, a German company that entered the market in 2000 as the first wind farm builder in Taiwan.
PHOTO: CNA
Officials said that more windmills are under construction in western coastal areas and Penghu, with an additional total capacity of 500 megawatts.
Each unit will cost at least NT$100 million (US$3 million) to build.
They said the coastal areas are ideal for the development of wind power, as they enjoy six months of strong northwesterly winds every year, with an average wind speed of 5 meters per second to 6 meters per second.
The Bureau of Energy has set the target of generating enough renewable energy to meet 10 percent of the country's electricity needs by 2010, with wind power making up 80 percent of the renewable energy.
Taipower, the sole electricity supplier in the country, began to harness wind energy in 2002 and plans to establish 200 wind turbines in Taiwan proper and Penghu by 2010.
Taipower's long-term wind power development plant will build an additional 546 wind turbines between 2010 and 2020 in shallow waters off the west coast and Penghu, with a total capacity of 1,980 megawatts.
The estimated cost for the wind turbines is NT$200 million each.
Out of the 546 windmills, 176 will be built off Penghu and the electricity generated by these units will be relayed to Taiwan through a 40km-long undersea cable.
The other 370 units will be established 10km to 15km off the coast of Changhua and Yunlin counties, Taipower said.
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
New measures aimed at making Taiwan more attractive to foreign professionals came into effect this month, the National Development Council said yesterday. Among the changes, international students at Taiwanese universities would be able to work in Taiwan without a work permit in the two years after they graduate, explainer materials provided by the council said. In addition, foreign nationals who graduated from one of the world’s top 200 universities within the past five years can also apply for a two-year open work permit. Previously, those graduates would have needed to apply for a work permit using point-based criteria or have a Taiwanese company
The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted two Taiwanese and issued a wanted notice for Pete Liu (劉作虎), founder of Shenzhen-based smartphone manufacturer OnePlus Technology Co (萬普拉斯科技), for allegedly contravening the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) by poaching 70 engineers in Taiwan. Liu allegedly traveled to Taiwan at the end of 2014 and met with a Taiwanese man surnamed Lin (林) to discuss establishing a mobile software research and development (R&D) team in Taiwan, prosecutors said. Without approval from the government, Lin, following Liu’s instructions, recruited more than 70 software
RSS