Solar module supplier United Renewable Energy Co (UREC, 聯合再生能源) yesterday said that it has formed a solar energy venture with Taiwan Life Insurance Co (台灣人壽保險), Shin Kong Life Insurance Co (新光人壽) and a venture capital unit of Shin Kong Financial Holding Co (新光金控).
The companies have agreed to inject initial capital of NT$3 billion (US$101.42 million) into the new venture, a UREC statement said.
The new venture is to build and operate solar power plants in Taiwan, the statement said.
Taiwan could become a “green energy” hub as the government is aiming for renewable energy to account for 20 percent of power generated by the end of 2025, it said.
UREC expects to secure approval for the construction of several large solar power plants by the end of this year, paving the way for those projects to begin next year, the company said.
That would help boost UREC’s solar module shipments and improve operational efficiency, it said.
Since 2014, Taiwan Life has invested in, or granted loans to, NT$20 billion of solar energy projects, showing its support for the government’s energy policy, the company said.
Separately, UREC yesterday posted revenue of NT$1.24 billion for last month, a 2.26 percent month-on-month increase from NT$1.21 billion, but an 11.43 percent year-on-year decline from NT$1.39 billion last year.
In the first half of this year, revenue plunged 37.25 percent year-on-year to NT$6.28 billion from NT$10.01 billion, a regulatory filing showed.
The company said that it is adding new capacity to cope with rising demand for solar modules from Taiwanese customers, while it expects demand in overseas markets to pick up in the second half of the year as more nations reopen their economies following the COVID-19 pandemic.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to