Electricity sector in Taiwan

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

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

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.

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.[12]

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.[13]

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.[14] Once the reserve margin falls below the 900 MW alert level, power rationing will be put into place.[15]

In 2014, the reserved margin of electricity in Taiwan was 14.7%, in 2015 it felt to 10.4%.[16] On 19 October 2016, it felt to 2.38% which is below the 900 MW threshold value, triggering the warning.[17][18]

Transmission and distribution

Electricity transmission in Taiwan in 1934.
Electricity transmission line in Taichung.
Electricity transmission line river crossing in Yunlin County.
Primary Substation in Taipei.
Dispatch center in Keelung.
Electricity distribution line in Orchid Island, Taitung County.
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.[19] The total length of the distribution line is 351,474 km and it goes up deep as the 4th level for underground distribution.[20]

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.[21] 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.[22]

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.[23][9] Around 70% of its distribution system has been fully automated.[24]

Smart grid

Taipower allocated US$ 800 million worth of investment for the development of distribution automation and smart substations.[24] 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.[21]

Losses

In 2013, Taiwan's line losses accounted for 7,290.9 GWh or 2.96% of total domestic consumption.[13]

Load

Rating

At the customers end, electricity in Taiwan uses 110 V and 60 Hz.[25]

Peak load

The peak load in Taiwan's electrical grid was 33,957 MW in 2013[26][9][27] and 34,820 MW in 2014. It is predicted that the peak load will reach 43,010 MW in 2026.[28] 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.[29][15] On 6 July 2015, the peak load record was broken when electricity consumption reached 35,560 MW at 1:45 p.m. local time, putting the reserve margin to an alarming level at 3.07%.[30]

Historical peak load in Taiwan
Date Time Peak load
15 July 2014 1:40 p.m. 35,090 MW
2 July 2015 1:48 p.m. 35,380 MW
6 July 2016 1:45 p.m. 35,560 MW
27 July 2016 1:46 p.m. 35,821 MW
28 July 2016 1:43 p.m. 36,199 MW

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%).[31][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. [28]

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

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.[24] 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.[21]

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]

In October 2016, due to the reduced reserve capacity of Taipower because of the continuing hot weather, the Executive Yuan ordered government offices around Taiwan to do power saving between 12.00-02.00 p.m., especially air conditioners and lights.[32]

Electricity rationing

Taipower listed five color scales to indicate the level of electricity reserve during a day. Green color indicates reserve margin of more than 10% of total power generation, yellow indicates margin between 6-10%, orange indicates margin below 6%, red indicates margin of less than 900 MW and black indicates margin of less than 500 MW thus Taipower shall initiate electricity rationing.[33][34] Since 1988, Taiwan has experienced 57 rationing with the latest one happened in 2002.

In the event of the execution of power rationing, Taipower would first reduce the power supply by 5% to business customers with loads more than 5 MW, followed by 5% reduction to those use between 1-5 MW if problem persists. Rationing would be increased to 10-15% if the reserve continues to drop. If problem still continues, rationing would be imposed to business and households with loads less than 1 MW.[35]

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.[36] Summer electricity rates is imposed to customers during summer seasons between June and September every year for usage more than 120 kW per month.[37][38]

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.[39]

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.[20]

Tourism

Tourism-purpose electrical-related objects in Taiwan are:

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Renewable Energy". Re.org.tw. Archived from the original on 2013-10-30. Retrieved 2013-11-11.
  2. ↑ "Renewable Energy". Re.org.tw. Retrieved 2013-11-11.
  3. ↑ "Ever Power IPP Co., Ltd. (长生电力) | Taiwan | Company Profile". Securities.com. 1996-01-30. Retrieved 2013-11-11.
  4. ↑ "HoPing Power Company (和平电力) | Taiwan | Company Profile". Securities.com. 1997-10-29. Retrieved 2013-11-11.
  5. ↑ "Hsin Tao Power Corp. (新桃电力) | Taiwan | Company Profile". Securities.com. 1998-06-16. Retrieved 2013-11-11.
  6. ↑ "Mai-Liao Power Corp. (麦寮汽电) | Taiwan | Company Profile". Securities.com. 1996-04-12. Retrieved 2013-11-11.
  7. ↑ "Star Energy Power Corp. (星能电力) | Taiwan | Company Profile". Securities.com. 2000-08-28. Retrieved 2013-11-11.
  8. ↑ "Sun Ba Power Corp. (森霸电力) | Taiwan | Company Profile". Securities.com. 2000-08-29. Retrieved 2013-11-11.
  9. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 "Taiwan Power Company Sustainability Report" (PDF). 20 December 2013. Retrieved 2014-08-23.
  10. 1 2 3 "Taiwan Nuclear Power". World-nuclear.org. Retrieved 2014-04-21.
  11. 1 2 Adam Hwang, DIGITIMES, Taipei [Wednesday 7 May 2014] (2014-05-07). "Taiwan generates 213,400GWh of power in 2013, says Taipower". Digitimes.com:8080. Retrieved 2014-06-09.
  12. ↑ "Taichung Power Plant- world’s largest coal fired power plant | Morgan Energy Solutions". Morganenergysol.com. 2013-01-16. Retrieved 2013-11-11.
  13. 1 2 "Bureau of Energy, Ministry of Economic Affairs, R.O.C. - Energy Statistical annual Reports".
  14. ↑ "Power outages possible May 20-28: officials". Focus Taiwan.
  15. 1 2 "Power consumption hits new high this year". Focus Taiwan.
  16. ↑ "Power outages a concern: Taipower". Taipei Times.
  17. ↑ "Taipower warns of electricity shortages". The China Post.
  18. ↑ "Taipower issues power rationing warning". Focus Taiwan.
  19. ↑ "LCG Consulting - EnergyOnline / Designing Tariffs for Electricity Transmission and Distribution in Taiwan". Energyonline.com. Archived from the original on 2014-07-14. Retrieved 2014-06-09.
  20. 1 2 "Taiwan praised by World Bank for providing electricity efficiently".
  21. 1 2 3 "Taiwan power companyConstruction Project". Taipower.com.tw. Retrieved 2014-06-09.
  22. ↑ "Bringing out the power in Taiwan". Asian Power. Retrieved 2014-06-09.
  23. ↑ "Taiwan power company-What We Do".
  24. 1 2 3 "Taiwan Power: Quietly Getting the Smart Grid Right?". Greentech Media. 2012-07-09. Retrieved 2014-06-09.
  25. ↑ "INTERNATIONAL LINE VOLTAGE STANDARDS - Controlled Power Company". Controlledpwr.com. Retrieved 2013-11-11.
  26. ↑ "Taiwan power company-What We Do".
  27. ↑ "2011 Annual Report : Taiwan Power Company" (PDF). Taipower.com.tw. Retrieved 2013-11-11.
  28. 1 2 "With increased use and old generators, electricity shortages likely by 2019: Taipower".
  29. ↑ "Nation breaks power use record; ministry fears less investment".
  30. ↑ "Electricity consumption sets record as Typhoon Nepartak approaches - Society - FOCUS TAIWAN - CNA ENGLISH NEWS".
  31. ↑ "Taiwan power company-What We Do".
  32. ↑ http://focustaiwan.tw/news/aeco/201610190009.aspx
  33. ↑ Ku, Chuan; Low, Y.F. (7 AUgust 2017). "No plans to ration electricity: Cabinet". Focus Taiwan. Retrieved 8 August 2017. Check date values in: |date= (help)
  34. ↑ Liao, Yu-yang; Kao, Evelyn (7 August 2017). "Power supply flashes red as mercury hits year's high in Taipei". Focus Taiwan. Retrieved 8 August 2017.
  35. ↑ Li, Lauly (8 August 2017). "Power supply hits crucial ‘red’ alert". Taipei Times. Retrieved 8 August 2017.
  36. ↑ "Line Information". Taiwan Power Company.
  37. ↑ "Electricity pricing mechanism reached". Taipei Times.
  38. ↑ "Electricity bills will increase in summer, warns Taipower Co.". The China Post.
  39. ↑ "8 killed, 4 missing, 420 injured as Typhoon Soudelor hits Taiwan". Focus Taiwan.
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