With a recent massive power outage revealing the fragility of Taiwan's electrical grid and highlighting the need for power storage, the nation's Ministry of Science and Technology will not rule out introducing smart power storage systems from Tesla, the No. 1 electric vehicle maker and solar energy supplier in the US, in a bid to reduce the risk of large blackouts.
The widespread power cut across 17 cities and counties came suddenly on August 15 evening, when six generators of a power plant in northern city malfunctioned after a two-minute cutoff in natural gas supply, affecting millions of households amid a heatweave.
Chen Liang-gee, minister of science and technology, said Tesla now maintains mega energy storage systems in San Francisco, the US and Australia, and therefore his ministry will move to discuss with Tesla over the feasibility of introducing similar systems into Taiwan. While Taiwan has yet to set up power storage facilities due to extremely high costs involved, Chen continued, Tesla can utilize an innovative concept of Hyperloop to sharply cut energy storage cost. Once the American EV maker has decided to build a mega energy storage system in Taiwan, it can find Taiwan's suppliers to join the construction job, thus generating business opportunities for related local industries, according to Chen.
The minister disclosed that his ministry's National Energy Program has solutions to address the island's fragile power supply structures, such as accelerating the deployment of smart power grids, establishing distributed cogeneration systems, and building smart grid storage facilities. He added that the science parks on the island remained unaffected by the latest massive power cut, due mainly to regular use of ultra-high-voltage power transmission lines.
Officials at the statge-run Taiwan Power said the failure of generators at the power plant immediately led to a 12% loss in power supply, forcing the company to implement power rationing among different regions. Such an emergency rationing, the officials added, is different from a "planned" rationing that usually starts with cutting power supply to major industrial users in science parks and industrial zones, with advance notice given to help them avoid unnecessary production losses.
Premier Lin Chuan also noted that the collapse of a power transmission tower of the Hoping Power Plant in northeastern Taiwan in late July and the recent island-wide power outage have clearly demonstrated that there exist some structural problems that may undermine the stability of Taiwan's power supply networks. He said the government will conduct a thorough review of the existing centralized power structures and the stability of power grids, and seek ways to make power supply systems less vulnerable to natural disasters.
Tags: power supply solar energy