Power outages on May 13 were blamed on human error, while cuts on Monday last week were attributed to an issue with scheduled maintenance work carried out by Taiwan Power Co (Taipower).
The regional power cuts on both days affected generators C and D at the Singda Power Plant (興達電廠) in Kaohsiung’s Yongan District (永安), leading to complaints of unfairness from the public, who were unhappy that the company gave priority to uninterrupted power supply for industries.
Even though Taipower discounted electricity bills of consumers affected by the outages, many found the events unacceptable.
Had Taipower had customers sign an agreement that they would accept reduced electricity bills in the event of a power cut due to temporary supply shortages, the reaction might have been different.
In Western countries with deregulated electricity sectors, many electricity companies offer “interruptible” power options, in the same way that mobile phone contracts have a choice of payment programs, calculating the optimum program for both parties based on past behavior.
At present, Taipower customers are not given much choice, and everyone’s electricity bill is calculated in the same way, so it is only reasonable to question the fairness of prioritizing who should lose power during a cut.
It is only right that products have different market prices, and the stability of electricity power supply is a major aspect of the quality of that product.
Supply during peak times and off-peak times ought to be considered different products. Consumers who cannot tolerate even the slightest outage, as with sequential processes such as wafer and panel fabrication — which absolutely need a stable power supply — could opt for a higher rate to purchase guaranteed supply.
This is something that everyone could agree on and would avoid any moral conundrums about who should be prioritized, the public or industry.
Taipower has only ever offered a single product to the majority of its consumers for technological reasons. Traditional electricity meters can only calculate the amount of power used and are unable to record the amounts used over specific periods. The first condition for improving electricity sales is the rollout of smart meters.
Over the past few years, following the installation of smart meters by industry consumers, Taipower has more control over 40 percent of electricity, so when regulating peak consumption, there exist a range of demand response mechanisms designed to affect a virtual power plant, obviating the need to spend tens of billions of dollars to build a traditional large power plant that would be solely for backup use during peak hours.
Taipower should adjust the price differential for electricity supplied during peak and off-peak hours to allow industry consumers to tweak peak-hour production and install power storage facilities.
At the same time, nuclear power plants and coal power stations, which are constantly online and generating power, can be retired, to be gradually replaced with natural gas, which can be turned on and off like a faucet. Overnight electricity use can be charged at cost, to facilitate the restructuring of high carbon emitting industries.
The Ministry of Economic Affairs should allocate funds to expedite the installation of smart meters to fall in line with changes in electricity usage, manage peak consumption, and enable energy conservation and flexible scheduling.
After all, economic incentives are far more effective than shouting empty slogans.
Pan Han-shen is the international secretary of the Trees Party.
Translated by Paul Cooper
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