Minister of Science and Technology Chen Liang-gee (陳良基) yesterday attended a beam-raising ceremony for the main building of the Joint Research Center for Green Energy Technologies in Tainan, saying that he expects the center to become a hub for research on green energy generation, preservation and storage.
The center is near the Tainan High Speed Rail Station and is part of the wider Shalun Smart Green Energy Science City, which also encompasses Academia Sinica’s planned second campus, the Taiwan CAR (connected, autonomous, road-test) Lab and other industrial or exhibition spaces.
The Taiwan CAR Lab, which is focused on developing self-driving technology, was inaugurated in February.
Photo: Wu Chun-feng, Taipei Times
Construction crews broke ground for the joint research center in April last year and it is expected to be completed by February next year.
The beam-raising ceremony marked the final stage of construction, the Ministry of Science and Technology said.
Developing alternative power sources has become a global trend, and the center is expected to serve as a pool for technological research and industrial development of green energy, Chen said at the ceremony.
The science ministry would work with the Ministry of Economic Affairs and other agencies to streamline the development and commercialization of techniques developed at the center to help the nation secure a place in the global green energy industry, he said.
Chen thanked the Tainan City Government for supporting the project.
The center’s development is being overseen by a team from National Applied Research Laboratories (NARL), the science ministry said.
Officials from the economics ministry and the Atomic Energy Council’s Institute of Nuclear Energy Research — which has cultivated talent for green energy research — would be stationed at the center, it said.
While the second-phase National Energy Program (NEP-II) was completed last year, some research projects that were part of the program would subsequently be developed by the center, NARL vice president Wu Kuang-chong (吳光鐘) said.
Wu is an expert on applied mechanics and was chief executive of NEP-II.
Research projects at the center would involve materials used in solar and offshore wind power plants, energy conversion, hydrogen energy systems and smart electricity grids, among others, Wu said.
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