Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) has purchased five new natural gas power generators from General Electric Co (GE) that would add 6.5 million kilowatts to Taiwan’s power capacity, a 16.2 percent boost, the state-run company said yesterday.
Three of the five units would be installed at the Sinda Power Plant in Kaohsiung, while two would be added to the Taichung Power Plant, Taipower said.
The combined cycle generators feature a gas turbine and a steam turbine to generate “up to 50 percent more electricity from the same fuel than a traditional simple-cycle plant,” the GE Web site said.
Photo: Wang Yi-sung, Taipei Times
A signing ceremony was held in Taipei yesterday, with the companies participating in the project represented by Taipower chairman Yang Wei-fuu (楊偉甫), GE Gas Power Asia Pacific president and CEO Ramesh Singaram and Michael Yang (楊宗興), chairman of CTCI Corp (中鼎工程), the construction partner in the projects.
“After attracting bids from manufacturers all over the world, we have chosen GE to supply our gas generator units because of their exceptional efficiency,” Yang Wei-fu said.
With costs totaling NT$100 billion (US$3.51 billion), “this is the largest natural gas generator purchase in the world in 2020,” Yang added.
“This purchase is in line with the government’s policy of increasing natural gas and decreasing coal consumption. It will also ensure future power stability while maintaining air quality,” he said.
Preparation for the installation of the units has begun at the Sinda Power Plant, with the first generator scheduled to produce electricity by 2024, with the two others at the plant projected to go online a year later, Taipower said.
However, the Taichung City Government has yet to grant permission for the two new units at the plant in the city, Yang Wei-fu said, calling on the city government to expedite the process.
“We need their help to ensure the stability of our future power supply,” he said.
The new gas-fired generators would allow the company to retire the aging No. 1 and No. 2 coal-fired generators at the Sinda Power Plant, Taipower manager Chang Ting-shu (張廷抒) said.
‘CLEANER THAN COAL’
“Comparatively speaking, natural gas is cleaner than coal,” Chang said. “We will be able to take out the oldest, dirtiest coal-burning plants while ensuring our power supply.”
There are no plans to retire coal-fired generators in Taichung, as the generators at the powerplant are newer, he said, adding that NT$9 billion has been spent to make the Taichung units “less polluting.”
“Hopefully, when the new Taichung units are up and running, we can reduce the use of the coal-fired plants, but we will keep them operational as peaker [peak-season] plants,” Chang said.
Installation of the Taichung units could be completed as early as 2024, pending approval.
“The ball is not in our court,” Chang 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