The electricity sector in Taiwan ranges from generation, transmission, distribution and sales of electricity, covering Taiwan island and its offshore islands.
Regulator
Electricity sector in Taiwan is regulated by its state-owned electric power utility company Taiwan Power Company (Taipower), established on 1 May 1946.
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, which are: Ever Power IPP Co., Ltd. Ho-Ping Power Company Hsin Tao Power Corporation Mai-Liao Power Corporation Star Energy Power Corporation Sun Ba Power Corporation Chiahui Power Corporation Kuo Kuang Power Corporation Hsing Yuan Power Corporation (Star Buck Power Corporation)
Generation
Installed capacity
At the end of 2016, the total installed capacity of electricity in Taiwan was 49.06 GW, which came from coal-based thermal (34.73%), gas-based thermal (32.32%), nuclear (10.49%), renewable energy (9.10%), fuel-based thermal (8.06%) and pumped storage hydro (5.3%).
Power generation
Total power generation in 2017 was 270,279 GWh – which was supplied from coal (46.6%), natural gas (34.6%), nuclear (8.3%), renewables (4.6%), oil (4.7%), and pumped-storage hydro (1.2%).
In 2012, Taipower purchased electricity from nine Independent Power Producers with a total capacity of 7,652.1 MW. Taiwan has seen an annual growth of 4.4% in terms of electricity generation in 1992–2012.
In terms of the 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.
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.
In 2012, the base load power sources constituted 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 and 14.8%, slightly lower than the expected 10–15% value.
Power plants
As 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 fourth largest coal-fired power plant with a 5,500 MW installed capacity, with an additional 324 MW from its gas turbines and wind turbines. The power plant is located in Longjing District, Taichung. The plant is also the largest power plant in Taiwan.
The Tatan Power Plant in Guanyin, Taoyuan is the world's largest combined cycle gas turbine power plant with a 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.
Reserved margin
Taiwan set the operating reserve margin between power availability and power demand to be 6% minimum. Any value below that number would trigger an alert. Once the reserve margin falls below the 900 MW alert level, power rationing will be put into place.
In 2014, the reserve margin of electricity in Taiwan was 14.7%, in 2015 it fell to 10.4%. On 19 October 2016, it fell to 2.38% which is below the 900 MW threshold value, triggering the warning.
Transmission and distribution
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. All of the transmission lines are fully owned by Taipower. The total length of the distribution line is 351,474 km and it goes up deep as the 4th level for underground distribution.
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. 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.