As the demand for electricity is about to exceed the power supply, the public is becoming unnerved.
The government touts solar energy, aiming to increase the nation’s installed solar power capacity to 20 gigawatts by 2025. Solar power is seen as a panacea and therefore the required infrastructure should be built at the expense of Taiwan’s limited land resources. This is a race against time and most solutions would either take too long to be useful or are simply too difficult to develop.
The power supply crisis arose because as the temperatures soar, so does the use of air conditioners and the demand for electricity. However, all the government does is tell the public to switch off the lights when they are not in use, set air conditioners at a higher temperature and use them less often, none of which tackles the problem at its root.
Consequently, when the government faces the problem of abolishing nuclear power, it does not address it correctly. There are only three ways for Taiwan to become nuclear-free and there are no tricks to accomplish this.
First, saving electricity by reducing the use of air conditioning and lighting, as they account for 26 percent of total national power consumption.
By cutting this by half — about 13 percent — not only will the load on the power grid be lowered, but it would also mean that alternative energy sources will only have to provide 5 percent of total national power consumption for the nation to be able to replace nuclear power, which currently accounts for about 18 percent of the power supply.
Second, employing distributed generation of solar power: generating power for private consumption rather than feeding the power back to the electrical grid to avoid distribution problems in the grid.
Third, storing energy: Solar power can be stored during the day for use at night as replacement for nuclear power plants that provide the base load.
Air conditioning is a part of life in Taiwan. Without it, everyday life and work would be seriously affected. Hence, every household is equipped with air conditioners. On average, there are at least two air conditioners in every household, which means there are about 30 million air conditioners in Taiwan. Every year, about 1 million air conditioners are sold, which translates into a replacement rate of 30 years.
The government has for many years implemented an energy efficiency rating scheme. Grading standards are set according to energy consumption. Class 1 products with the highest energy efficiency ratio (EER) of 5.7 consumes half the electricity used by products in Class 2 with an EER of 2.9 and use 60 percent less power than machines that are at least 10 years old.
Air conditioning systems in big buildings are mostly machines manufactured more than 10 years ago and they consume twice the amount of power than new machines.
An incentive program for air conditioners pays a subsidy of NT$2,000 for each Class 1 and Class 2 unit. However, simply by limiting subsidies to Class 1 machines and increasing the subsidies to NT$5,000 or even NT$6,000 per unit for a total of 1 million units, while recycling old machines, it would be possible to save 500 megawatts of power each year.
The government should see to it that old central air conditioning systems in big buildings are retired as soon as possible, while providing subsidies and financing in the process. The energy conservation effect will be similar to that of air conditioners for home use.
LEDs have been proven to use only half the power of conventional lamps. If the government subsidized LED lamps in the 1.2 million households in the nation, that would save 360 megawatts of power annually.
The information shows that cutting the power usage of air conditioning and lighting in half is readily achievable, and this is equal to the annual power produced by one power plant.
Using solar power to tackle the peak load problem is the right way to go. However, the government only encourages private installations of solar power systems and selling power to the grid, but when a certain amount of solar generation systems are in place, there could be momentary distribution problems in the power grid.
In Germany, for example, there has been an oversupply of solar power, which has caused development to stagnate. Solar power generation only accounts for about 7 percent of Germany’s total power supply. “Excess power supply” means that there is excess power supply for a short period of time — during daytime — which affects the electrical grid’s stability.
In addition, Taiwan has a subtropical and tropical climate with rapid variations in sunlight distribution and intensity. If solar power systems are widely installed and their power is transmitted to the power grid, that could be a ticking time bomb for the grid.
According to the information on Taiwan Power Co’s Web site, on June 6, at about 11:30am, which was not a peak load period, the solar power supply dropped by 24 percent every 10 minutes for a period of 30 minutes.
If, as is the government’s plan, solar power systems generating a total of 20 gigawatts of power were installed, and that power was sold to the electrical grid, the grid would have to increase output from conventional power plants by 5 gigawatts in 10 minutes, which is technically quite difficult to do.
The maintenance of electrical grids is another challenge and it is not only confined to summer. Hence, distributed generation of solar power should be encouraged, and the power should be used for self-consumption and not sold back to the electrical grid.
Generating solar power in daytime can solve the peak load problem, but after the sun goes down, the peak load period will be shifted to sometime after 5pm. If energy is not stored during the daytime for use at night, the electricity shortage will not go away. Hence, energy storage is a requirement for a nuclear-free nation, which also makes it possible to use solar power to supply the base load instead of nuclear power plants.
If these three steps are followed, the amount of solar power needed would be reduced substantially and installing rooftop solar panels would suffice. A nuclear-free Taiwan by 2025 could then become reality. Without a doubt, it would also stimulate domestic demand.
Huang Ping-chun is a professor of electrical engineering at National Taiwan University.
Translated by Ethan Zhan
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