Taiwan Power Company (Taipower), a state-owned utility, is ramping up its solar PV installations in Taiwan as part of Taiwan government’s renewable energy policy, which stresses on solar energy and offshore wind power. Taipower plans to develop 500MW of solar by 2020.
Taipower launched its first phase solar PV plant in 2008 and ended it in 2014 with an installation capacity of 18.2MW. The second phase development has already been launched in 2015 and is scheduled to be completed in 2018. As for the second phase, Taipower plans to invest over TW$800 million in installing more than 11MW of solar PV systems on its self-owned rooftops and lands using high-efficiency silicon-based modules.
The power generation from the second phase projects is expected to reach 13,000,000kWh per year, equal to total power consumption of 3,300 Taiwanese households.
Plans until 2020 have been arranged
Aside from the completed and ongoing phases, Taipower has unveiled extra three phases of plans through 2020 that will develop 100MW, 10MW and 300MW of solar projects respectively. The phase two to five will all integrate with concepts of landscape design, and may construct the projects as scenery sites or educational institutions for people to visit.
Furthermore, Taipoawer is speculating its sixth phase of solar PV developing that would reuse its self-owned lands or decommissioned nuclear power plants for building 30MW of solar projects by 2020.
The sum of phase one to six constructions will be around 500MW, while Taipower is actually required by the government to develop 1GW of PV installations by 2025. An official from Taipower noted that the company is still looking up for the space.
Meanwhile, Taipower will introduce “friendly grid-connection policy” for the island. To improve grid-connection capacity of solar systems, Taipower will elaborate short-term, mid-term and long-term programs along with renovation constructions for regions that have limited access to the power grids.