The government on Sunday launched the second phase of a solar power system on Itu Aba Island (Taiping Island, 太平島), as part of efforts to transform the largest Taiwan-controlled island in the contested South China Sea into a low-carbon island.
The second-phase 40-kilowatt-peak (kWp) solar power system, built with a 612kWp solar power storage facility, is expected to generate an estimated 50.527 megawatt-hours (MWh) of electricity per year, said Nieh Chia-hsin (聶嘉馨), deputy director-general of the Coast Guard Administration’s (CGA) Coastal Patrol Directorate General.
With the first-phase construction launched in December 2011, the entire solar power system is expected to generate about 189.5MWh of electricity per year and save 49,003 liters of diesel fuel annually, Nieh said at an inauguration ceremony on the island.
That would mean a reduction of 116 tonnes of carbon emissions from diesel generators per year, thanks to the increasing adoption of renewable energy generation, he added.
Funded by the Ministry of Economic Affairs, the CGA began the second-phase construction of the solar power system earlier this year in cooperation with Tatung Co.
Developing Itu Aba into a “low-carbon island” was an idea promoted by President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) in a South China Sea policy meeting in November 2010. The initiative aims to demonstrate the nation’s sovereignty over the area by focusing on scientific research and environmental protection.
China, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and the Philippines also claim all or part of the Spratly Islands (Nansha Islands, 南沙群島). Itu Aba is the largest island in the group.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the