Taiwan might be heading into another record summer of electricity use, Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) said yesterday.
First-quarter electricity use increased 3 percent year-on-year, with the last three days of last month breaking record peak use for March, the state-run utility said.
So far this month, power use is up 7 percent year-on-year. The most power used this month was on Thursday last week when 32.765 gigawatts (GW) were used in a day, up from the previous April record of 29.99GW.
Photo: Lin Cheng-kun, Taipei Times
The all-time record for single-day electricity use was set on July 23 last year, when usage reached 38.02GW.
“We expect that record to be broken this year,” Taipower manager Chang Ting-shu (張廷抒) said.
Taipower said that it was caught by surprise by how power use has been growing ahead of expectations, even before the arrival of the summer heat.
Increased domestic demand might have been caused by the stable economy, it added.
Taiwan’s electricity usage has increased year-on-year every year in the past few years, growing more than 2 percent last year.
Electricity generation capacity might also be strained by the water shortage, which has reduced first quarter hydroelectric power generation 16 percent year-on-year, Taipower said.
Chang said that he is still “confident” that Taipower will have the 10 percent reserve capacity necessary to handle summer peak demand, but it absolutely cannot do it without the four coal-fired generators in Taichung.
Taichung Mayor Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕) is blocking construction of two liquified natural gas (LNG) generators pending the decommissioning of the four coal-fired generators.
Chang said that delaying the construction of the new LNG generators would only delay the decommissioning of the older coal-fired generators.
“Mayor Lu is holding the construction of the new LNG generators hostage, but we cannot shut off the coal generators without creating a potential power crisis,” Chang said.
The new LNG plants would take five years to construct, he added.
Nvidia Corp chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) on Monday introduced the company’s latest supercomputer platform, featuring six new chips made by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), saying that it is now “in full production.” “If Vera Rubin is going to be in time for this year, it must be in production by now, and so, today I can tell you that Vera Rubin is in full production,” Huang said during his keynote speech at CES in Las Vegas. The rollout of six concurrent chips for Vera Rubin — the company’s next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) computing platform — marks a strategic
REVENUE PERFORMANCE: Cloud and network products, and electronic components saw strong increases, while smart consumer electronics and computing products fell Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday posted 26.51 percent quarterly growth in revenue for last quarter to NT$2.6 trillion (US$82.44 billion), the strongest on record for the period and above expectations, but the company forecast a slight revenue dip this quarter due to seasonal factors. On an annual basis, revenue last quarter grew 22.07 percent, the company said. Analysts on average estimated about NT$2.4 trillion increase. Hon Hai, which assembles servers for Nvidia Corp and iPhones for Apple Inc, is expanding its capacity in the US, adding artificial intelligence (AI) server production in Wisconsin and Texas, where it operates established campuses. This
US President Donald Trump on Friday blocked US photonics firm HieFo Corp’s US$3 million acquisition of assets in New Jersey-based aerospace and defense specialist Emcore Corp, citing national security and China-related concerns. In an order released by the White House, Trump said HieFo was “controlled by a citizen of the People’s Republic of China” and that its 2024 acquisition of Emcore’s businesses led the US president to believe that it might “take action that threatens to impair the national security of the United States.” The order did not name the person or detail Trump’s concerns. “The Transaction is hereby prohibited,”
Garment maker Makalot Industrial Co (聚陽) yesterday reported lower-than-expected fourth-quarter revenue of NT$7.93 billion (US$251.44 million), down 9.48 percent from NT$8.76 billion a year earlier. On a quarterly basis, revenue fell 10.83 percent from NT$8.89 billion, company data showed. The figure was also lower than market expectations of NT$8.05 billion, according to data compiled by Yuanta Securities Investment and Consulting Co (元大投顧), which had projected NT$8.22 billion. Makalot’s revenue this quarter would likely increase by a mid-teens percentage as the industry is entering its high season, Yuanta said. Overall, Makalot’s revenue last year totaled NT$34.43 billion, down 3.08 percent from its record NT$35.52
RSS