Electricity sector in Taiwan

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File:Using-electricity-efficaciously logo of Taiwan Power.jpg
Logo promoting the use of electricity efficiently in Taiwan

The electricity sector in Taiwan ranges from generation, transmission, distribution and sales of electricity, covering Taiwan island and its offshore islands.

Regulator

Taipower headquarter building in Taipei.

Electricity sector in Taiwan is regulated by its state-owned electric power utility company Taiwan Power Company (Taipower), established on 1 May 1946.[1]

Independent power producers

After the liberalization of Taiwan electricity market in January 1995, there are total of 9 independent power producers in Taiwan up to date,[2] which are:

Generation

File:Electricity Production in Taiwan.svg
Electricity generation in Taiwan in 1980–2010

Installed capacity

At the end of 2013, the total installed capacity of electricity in Taiwan was 41.18 GW, which came from gas-based thermal (37.0%), coal-based thermal (27.4%), nuclear (12.5%), fuel-based thermal (8.1%), pumped storage hydro (6.3%), renewable energy (8.7%).[9][10][11]

Power generation

Total power generation in 2013 was 213.4 TWh, which comes from coal (38.4%), natural gas (31.1%), nuclear (18.8%), solar and wind (4.5%), co-generation (3.4%), oil (2.3%) and pumped-storage hydro (1.5%). In 2012, Taipower purchased 7,652.1 MW of electricity from Taiwan's current nine IPP.[9] Taiwan has seen an annual growth of 4.4% in terms of electricity generation in 1992–2012.

In terms of price to produce electricity, the average generation cost of electricity in Taiwan was US$ 7.0 cent/kWh, which consists of US$ 1.9 cent/kWh for nuclear, US$ 5.8 cent/kWh for coal and US$ 11.25 cent/kWh for natural gas.[10]

Taipower operates three types of power plant based on the generation characteristics, which are peaking power plant, load following power plant and base load power plant.[11]

In 2012, the base load power source constituted for 42.4% of the total power generation in Taiwan, below the expected level of 55-65%. Over the past decade, the capacity of peak load energy sources was between 10.3-14.8%, slightly lower than the expected 10-15% value.[9]

Power plants

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Main article: List of power stations in Taiwan
Taichung Power Plant in Taichung.

As of end of 2007, Taiwan had a total of 78 power plants, which are 39 hydro power plants, 27 thermal power plants, 9 wind farms and 3 nuclear power plants.[12]

World records

Taiwan is home to Taichung Power Plant, the world's largest coal-fired power plant with a 5,500 MW installed capacity, with additional 324 MW from its gas turbine and wind power generated electricity. The power plant is located in Longjing District, Taichung. The plant is also the largest power plant in Taiwan.[13]

The Tatan Power Plant in Guanyin, Taoyuan is the world's largest gas turbine combined cycle power plant at the capacity of 4,419 MW.

Efficiency

In 2013, for steam turbine-based power plants, the plants have 31.89% for oil-fired plants, 35.71% for coal-fired plants and 30.93% for gas-fired plants of efficiency. The power plants also have efficiency of 37.17% for diesel engine plants, 25.08% for gas turbine plants and 44.78% for combined cycle plants.[14]

Reserved margin

Taiwan set the reserve margin between power availability and power demand to be 6% minimum. Any value below that number would trigger an alert.[15] In 2014, the reserved margin of electricity in Taiwan was 14.7% and in 2015 it felt to 10.4%.[16] Once the reserve margin falls below the 900 MW alert level, power rationing will be put into place.[17]

Transmission and distribution

File:Electric Transmission System Map, Taiwan, 1934.jpg
Electricity transmission in Taiwan in 1934.
File:TaichungPowerStation-Taiwan01.jpg
Electricity transmission line in Taichung.
File:Peace River，Taiwan.jpg
Electricity transmission line river crossing in Yunlin County.
File:Taipower Qingnian Primary Supply Distribution Substation 20131012.jpg
Primary Substation in Taipei.
File:Taipower Keelung Area Dispatch Control Center 20131216.jpg
Dispatch center in Keelung.
File:Electricity Transmission in Orchid Island 2010-9-15.jpg
Electricity distribution line in Orchid Island, Taitung County.
File:Looking north toward Sihyuan Wukou.JPG
Electricity distribution line in Yilan County.
File:Taiwan Power Company Grid.jpg
Distribution transformers.

Transmission and distribution lines

As of end of 2013, Taiwan owned a total of 17,054 km length of transmission line with the voltage levels of the transmission system are 345 kV and 161 kV.[9] All of the transmission lines are fully owned by Taipower.[18] The total length of the distribution line is 351,474 km and it goes up deep as the 4th level for underground distribution.[19]

Currently, Taipower is implementing the 6-year 7th Power Transmission and Substation Project starting January 2010 until December 2015 with a total investment of NT$ 238.9 billion.[20] The project will completed a new and expanded section of transmission lines running 2,370 km, a group of 130 substations and an expanded main transformer capacity of 23,560 MVA.[21]

Substations and distribution system

As of end of 2013, there were 598 substations within Taiwan's electrical grid, which consist of 29 EHV substations, 275 primary substations and 294 secondary substations with a capacity of 58,500 MVA, 71,480 MVA and 22,127 MVA respectively.[22][9] Around 70% of its distribution system has been fully automated.[23]

Smart grid

Taipower allocated US$ 800 million worth of investment for the development of distribution automation and smart substations.[23] In 2007, Taipower completed a smart grid roadmap for the future 20 years. It contains three phases, which are short term, medium term and long term. It also targets four areas, namely power grid safety and reliability, energy efficiency, customer service quality and integration of distributed power sources.[20]

Losses

In 2013, Taiwan's line losses accounted for 7,290.9 GWh or 2.96% of total domestic consumption.[14]

Load

Rating

At the customers end, electricity in Taiwan uses 110 V and 60 Hz.[24]

Peak load

The peak load in Taiwan's electrical grid was 33,957 MW in 2013[25][9][26] and 34,820 MW in 2014. It is predicted that the peak load will reach 43,010 MW in 2026.[27] On 2 July 2015 at 1:48 p.m. local time, electricity load instantaneously reached its highest peak ever in Taiwan history at 35,380 MW.[28][29]

Electricity consumption

In 2013, the total annual electricity consumption in Taiwan was 202 TWh, ranging from industrial (55.5%), residential (20.2%), commercial (15.6%) and others (8.7%).[30][9] The per capita electricity consumption in 2012 was 10,424 kWh.[10] As of 2015, the growth of electricity consumption is projected to grow by 1.9% annually. Northern Taiwan consumes 40% of the total power generated in Taiwan, and it relies on Central Taiwan and Southern Taiwan for additional power source. [27]

Customers

In 2012, there were a total of almost 13 millions of electricity customers in Taiwan, ranging from residential (89.4%), commercials (7.6%), industrial (1.6%) and others (1.4%).[9]

Electricity metering

File:Taiwan Power electricity meters 5258-62 - 5258-65.jpg
Taipower customer kWh meters

Taiwan implements the usage of advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) as one of the demand side management strategy to cut down energy consumption and upgrade energy usage efficiency with a total investment of US$ 2.74 billion.[23] The Bureau of Energy of the Ministry of Economic Affairs instructed Taipower to do AMI installations to 23,600 high voltage customers and 10,000 low voltage customers in 2012. As of the end of 2011, Taipower has completed the 1,200 AMI installations for 1,200 high voltage customers.[20]

Electricity saving

To encourage the public for energy and electricity saving, Taipower continued to launch the Power-Saving Initiative Measures and Energy Conservation Competitions to encourage the public to save electricity. After the measures were taken in 2012, a total amount of 4.833 TWh of electricity was saved in that year with carbon dioxide reduction reaching 2.59 million tons.[9]

Electricity tariff

For the customers end, the current tariff of electricity before tax in 2013 is NT$3.1165/kWh for lighting and NT$2.8020/kWh for power.[31] Summer electricity rates is imposed to customers during summer seasons between June and September every year for usage more than 120 kW per month.[32][33]

Blackout

The most number of power outage in Taiwan due to storm occurred on 9 August 2015 when Typhoon Soudelor hit the island, leaving 4.85 million households without electricity.[34][35]

Efficiency

In 2015, Taiwan ranked 2nd worldwide among 189 for providing electricity to users in an efficient manner in the category of Getting Electricity in the Doing Business 2016 rankings released by the World Bank.[19]

Tourism

Tourism-purpose electrical-related objects in Taiwan are:

See also

References

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  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 9.5 9.6 9.7 9.8 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  12. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  13. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  15. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  16. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  17. ↑ http://focustaiwan.tw/news/asoc/201605270030.aspx
  18. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  19. ↑ 19.0 19.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  20. ↑ 20.0 20.1 20.2 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  21. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  22. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  23. ↑ 23.0 23.1 23.2 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  24. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  25. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
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  27. ↑ 27.0 27.1 http://www.chinapost.com.tw/taiwan/national/national-news/2015/05/29/437138/With-increased.htm
  28. ↑ http://www.chinapost.com.tw/taiwan/business/2015/07/03/439777/Nation-breaks.htm
  29. ↑ http://focustaiwan.tw/news/asoc/201605270030.aspx
  30. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  31. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  32. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  33. ↑ http://www.chinapost.com.tw/taiwan-business/2015/05/19/436353/Electricity-bills.htm
  34. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  35. ↑ http://www.wantchinatimes.com/news-subclass-cnt.aspx?id=20150811000042&cid=1103
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