Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

According to a report on August 31, a recent analysis by Nikkei Asia, a foreign media, of the information disclosed by Taiwan Power Co., Ltd. (Tepco) found that a total of 30 power outages occurred in Taiwan from July to August this year, which also exposed the fragility of Taiwan's power supply.

Between July 1 and August 29, 22 blackouts affected 1000 or more households, the worst of which even affected 17000 families. Second, there were eight blackouts affecting 44 to 962 households.

The most common causes of these accidents are failures of feeder lines (cable lines), power transformers and high-voltage cables, which are facing high temperatures at the time of these accidents.

For now, fortunately, these blackouts have not affected a number of chip manufacturers in Taiwan's Hsinchu Science Park, including TSMC and Foxconn. However, some experts say this should serve as a warning to the development of Taiwan's vital technology industry.

First, the power supply is adequate, but the warning signal is clear. On August 25, thunderstorms and severe weather struck by lightning caused transmission lines to trip, resulting in a sudden power outage of about 17000 households in New Taipei, Taiwan's most populous city. On the same day, a massive power outage occurred in Kaohsiung, Taiwan's second largest city, in which termites bit through a cable, affecting about 3859 families.

Over the next two days, 7525 households in Kaohsiung and 8416 households in Kaohsiung went without power, according to public data from the Taiwan Electric Power Company, one because termites bit through the wire and the other because squirrels touched the wire.

▲ grocery stores affected by power outages

Zhou Guitian, a professor at the Center for risk Society and Policy Research at National Taiwan University, said: "the most urgent issue for Taiwan is not whether there is enough electricity, but the stability of power supply. It is very important to improve the overall infrastructure construction in the future." The reason is that at present, Taiwan's reserve power capacity is still in sufficient supply.

Steven Chen, head of renewable energy in Taiwan at KPMG, an international accounting firm, said in an interview with Nikkei Asia: "as Taiwan's energy structure is shifting from traditional power supply to more diversified and diversified sources of energy, including renewable energy, a more flexible smart management grid will be needed."

The changeable nature of renewable energy means that the grid will have to cope with larger and more frequent voltage changes, he explained.

Therefore, if Taiwan fails to upgrade its basic power facilities, such power outages will occur again and again.

Second, there were nearly 5000 blackouts in the first half of this year, and power demand is expected to rise 2.3 percent a year. On March 3 this year, after a massive blackout in Taiwan affected more than 5 million households, the Taiwan provincial government drafted a plan of 100 billion New Taiwan dollars (equivalent to 22.685 billion yuan) to improve the resilience of the power grid and the stability of power supply in the next 10 years.

Recently, the amount of investment in the program has increased to 150 billion New Taiwan dollars (about 34.027 billion yuan).

In an interview with Nikkei Asia, Taiwan Power spokesman Wu Qingzhong said that the number of blackouts in Taiwan has actually decreased over the years, from 21000 in 2012 to 9000 last year. There were 4847 blackouts in the first half of this year, down 11 per cent from a year earlier.

However, even if the number of blackouts is reduced, thousands of households are still affected by it, so Taiwan Electric Power Company of China is still trying to improve the stability of power supply.

"at the end of April this year, we submitted a budget to Taiwan's economic affairs authorities to strengthen the restoration capacity of the power grid, one of which is to reduce the scope and duration of future blackouts to further prevent the impact of power outages from spreading." Wu Qingzhong said.

Tsai ing-wen had previously suggested that Taiwan would be carbon neutral by 2050 and planned to phase out nuclear power by 2025.

However, as a technology hub, Taiwan's demand for electricity is something to be reckoned with. Electricity demand in the region is expected to grow by at least 2.3% a year by 2028, mainly driven by the development of the semiconductor industry and foreign investment.

Third, the power grid is highly centralized and aging, and the supply of renewable energy is insufficient. In addition, Taiwan's power grid is highly centralized and aging, and its more than 10000 cables, power transformers and other equipment need to be frequently maintained and replaced.

Coupled with the general public's resistance to the construction of large power plants, natural gas terminals or high-voltage transformers, Taiwan Power has to add additional equipment in areas where there are existing generators to cope with the growing demand for electricity. this also further makes the power grid more centralized.

Not only power resources, but also many of Taiwan's resources rely on imports, which also highlights the fragility of its economy. 97.8 per cent of the region's energy supply depends on imports, including crude oil, natural gas and coal.

Meanwhile, according to public data in the first half of the year, 42.5 per cent of Taiwan's main power sources are coal and 38.1 per cent are natural gas, while nuclear power accounts for 8.5 per cent and renewable energy accounts for only 8.1 per cent.

In response to this figure, Taiwan plans to increase the share of renewable energy to 20 per cent and natural gas to 50 per cent by 2025.

▲ Distribution of main Power sources in Taiwan

Among them, the construction of offshore wind farms is an important way for Taiwan to promote energy self-sufficiency, but this move is influenced by geopolitical factors, which makes its plan face obstacles in attracting investment.

"geopolitical uncertainty could affect the willingness of global wind farm developers and operators to continue to build large-scale wind farms locally because these investments involve hundreds of billions of NT dollars." Steven Chen said.

Therefore, Zhou Guitian said, "We do need to draft some emergency and backup power supply plans to deal with any potential disruptions." In the future, geopolitical risk is also a key factor when considering the construction of power infrastructure.

Conclusion: frequent power outages may warn the impact of semiconductor production since this year, semiconductor manufacturers in Taiwan have encountered many accidents, such as water shortage, earthquake, power outage, equipment failure and so on. Even if semiconductor manufacturers have early warning and prevention mechanisms for all kinds of natural and man-made disasters, such natural and man-made disasters occur frequently and will still have a great impact on production in the future. From the perspective of public data, the frequency of power outages in Taiwan has been greatly reduced, but its impact has not diminished. In the future, if power outages and other events still occur frequently, the potential negative impact will be inestimable.

In addition, the attraction of investment in the region will also be affected to some extent because of the instability of its power supply and geopolitical risks.

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