The operators of Taiwan’s first privately run megawatt-level geothermal power plant in Yilan County have revealed that the site has produced more than 38 million kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity since opening in October 2021.
Staff at the 4.2MW Cingshuei Geothermal Power Plant shared the information during a visit by Minister Without Portfolio Wu Tze-cheng (吳澤成) and Yilan County Commissioner Lin Zi-miao (林姿妙) on Friday.
The development of the geothermal power plant in Datong Township (大同) was contracted to Yi Yuan Co (宜元股份), a joint venture of Fabulous Power Co (結元能源開發) and Taiwan Cogeneration Corp (台灣汽電共生), on a build-and-operate, and rehabilitate-operate-transfer model, when Wu was acting Yilan County commissioner in 2017.
Photo courtesy of Yilan County Government via CNA
The power plant then began operations October 2021 during Lin’s term and has produced 38 million kWh of power as of the end of July, its operators said.
The construction began in 2017 with an initial investment of NT$765 million (US$23,90 million), and the power plant was completed in September 2021 before securing a license from the Bureau of Energy a month later.
The plant has adopted “binary-cycle generators” that cause less damage to turbines and less precipitation of solids. the Yilan County government said.
The 38.25 million kWh generated can meet the demand of about three-quarters of the combined households in Datong Township and the neighboring Sanshing Township (三星), the county government said.
The two townships consist of about 10,000 small households.
When Wu, who concurrently serves as head of the Executive Yuan’s Public Construction Commission, inquired whether the accumulation of solid substances — commonly known as “fouling” — could possibly again affect the plant’s operations, he was assured by Yi Yuan Co that the new generator units have been efficient and so far the fouling rate has been better than before.
Touting the power plant as a crucial energy provider for Yilan County and a milestone for Taiwan’s effort to achieve sustainable development, Lin said she is expecting to continue local-central collaboration on power generation in the future.
When Lika Megreladze was a child, life in her native western Georgian region of Guria revolved around tea. Her mother worked for decades as a scientist at the Soviet Union’s Institute of Tea and Subtropical Crops in the village of Anaseuli, Georgia, perfecting cultivation methods for a Georgian tea industry that supplied the bulk of the vast communist state’s brews. “When I was a child, this was only my mum’s workplace. Only later I realized that it was something big,” she said. Now, the institute lies abandoned. Yellowed papers are strewn around its decaying corridors, and a statue of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin
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