Taiwan urged to understand and support geothermal as real electricity option
Mountain view over Taipei, Taiwan (source: flickr/ Connie Ma, creative commons)
Alexander Richter
30 Apr 2018
With an intensifying debate on energy shortages in Taiwan and plans for coal-fired plants, various groups are pushing the country's government to support and better position the geothermal energy option.
With ongoing struggles and impending electricity shortages, Taiwan sees an intensified debate on its path on energy development and renewables.
The proposals for the building of a coal-fired thermal power plant in Shenzen have become an important controversial issue.
In its comment session, the Taiwan News, report on the debate. With a non-nuclear agenda, the current government, driven by a – seemingly – strong public backing, a renewable energy future has been drawn.
With the specific case of the Shenzen (coal-fired) plant, geothermal is being positioned as concrete alternative.
The author of the article, describes Taiwan’s geothermal goal of 600 MW by 2025, while a strong emphasis is set on wind power with goals of 3,000 MW of offshore wind capacity. So while favourable electricity prices attract international investors, it is unclear on why this pricing is being applied for geothermal power generation, as it provides a stable and baseload supply of electricity.
The Energy Bureau of Taiwan actually reduced the original 600 MW target for geothermal power generation capacity to to 200 MW, and there are no other supporting measures. As a result, geothermal power in Taiwan has not moved so far.
The author says that planning objectives of geothermal power generation should be improved. For the current issues of the Shenzhou Power Plant and the Concord Power Plant , I have written many articles and published them in the “Time Commentary” of the Taiwanese English News.
There are two basic proposals: Because there is a submarine volcano at a distance of 3 km off the coast of the Concord Power Plant, the Concord Power Plant is planned to have a capacity of a fuel unit, a 500 MW geothermal power plant. The second item, the current plan for the Shenzhen Power Plant, is 1.2 GW of coal, and it is said to use “ clean coal ”. There are already many comments on the lack of “clean coal” and I will not repeat it here.
In fact, if you want to use clean fuel, then directly use raw materials, including Pennisetum, bagasse, coconut shell, etc., so that we are reluctant to accept, because there is no CO2 emissions and less air pollution. In fact, the best way is to directly change the 1.2GW power generation capacity to the power generation capacity of geothermal power plants. I also said in another article that we should combine Concord and Shenzhou together for overall planning. There is 1.7 GW of power generation capacity for this type of geothermal power.
With the capacity of 92% of international geothermal power plants, it is possible to generate 13.6 billion kWh of electricity, which means that the Ministry of Economic Affairs has repeatedly declared that the amount of electricity in the north will be 13.4 billion kWh by 2025.
Seven kilometers from the sea off Shenao is the volcanic island of Keelung, with abundant geothermal resources. Wang Shoucheng, a member of the Ocean University Geothermal Team, assessed that there should be a 200°C fracture zone within 2000 meters. When drilling into this fracture zone, there will be temperature and flow; if it is not drilled into the fracture zone, the geothermal gradient should be 40-60°C. / Km. 3000 meters is about 150±30°C; 5000 meters is about 250±50°C.”
Then, we hereby propose such a proposal that the government can acquire 1.7 GW of capacity and the purchase price of geothermal power according to the current selection of offshore wind turbines. All this is entirely in line with the current selection of offshore wind turbines. I believe that some well-known international geothermal manufacturers, such as Ormat, Hitachi and other generator manufacturers, as well as Germany’s Herrenknecht drilling machines, will all come to Taiwan to participate in such a selection.
We, Lanyang Geothermal Company, are currently also exposed to the ultra-low price of 2.7 yuan in the Changbin area, and solar photovoltaic manufacturers below the exchange rate, are asking us to do DD (Due Diligence investment risk assessment) for the 100MW Lize case. ). If there is a demand for geothermal power capacity of 1.7 GW in North Taiwan Concorde and Shenzhen, it is believed that more international renewable energy companies will form a delegation to invest in Taiwan.
Source: Taiwan News
