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.
IN THE AIR: While most companies said they were committed to North American operations, some added that production and costs would depend on the outcome of a US trade probe Leading local contract electronics makers Wistron Corp (緯創), Quanta Computer Inc (廣達), Inventec Corp (英業達) and Compal Electronics Inc (仁寶) are to maintain their North American expansion plans, despite Washington’s 20 percent tariff on Taiwanese goods. Wistron said it has long maintained a presence in the US, while distributing production across Taiwan, North America, Southeast Asia and Europe. The company is in talks with customers to align capacity with their site preferences, a company official told the Taipei Times by telephone on Friday. The company is still in talks with clients over who would bear the tariff costs, with the outcome pending further
A proposed 100 percent tariff on chip imports announced by US President Donald Trump could shift more of Taiwan’s semiconductor production overseas, a Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (TIER) researcher said yesterday. Trump’s tariff policy will accelerate the global semiconductor industry’s pace to establish roots in the US, leading to higher supply chain costs and ultimately raising prices of consumer electronics and creating uncertainty for future market demand, Arisa Liu (劉佩真) at the institute’s Taiwan Industry Economics Database said in a telephone interview. Trump’s move signals his intention to "restore the glory of the US semiconductor industry," Liu noted, saying that
STILL UNCLEAR: Several aspects of the policy still need to be clarified, such as whether the exemptions would expand to related products, PwC Taiwan warned The TAIEX surged yesterday, led by gains in Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), after US President Donald Trump announced a sweeping 100 percent tariff on imported semiconductors — while exempting companies operating or building plants in the US, which includes TSMC. The benchmark index jumped 556.41 points, or 2.37 percent, to close at 24,003.77, breaching the 24,000-point level and hitting its highest close this year, Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE) data showed. TSMC rose NT$55, or 4.89 percent, to close at a record NT$1,180, as the company is already investing heavily in a multibillion-dollar plant in Arizona that led investors to assume
AI: Softbank’s stake increases in Nvidia and TSMC reflect Masayoshi Son’s effort to gain a foothold in key nodes of the AI value chain, from chip design to data infrastructure Softbank Group Corp is building up stakes in Nvidia Corp and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the latest reflection of founder Masayoshi Son’s focus on the tools and hardware underpinning artificial intelligence (AI). The Japanese technology investor raised its stake in Nvidia to about US$3 billion by the end of March, up from US$1 billion in the prior quarter, regulatory filings showed. It bought about US$330 million worth of TSMC shares and US$170 million in Oracle Corp, they showed. Softbank’s signature Vision Fund has also monetized almost US$2 billion of public and private assets in the first half of this year,
RSS