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A senior government official in Malaysia has stated that the country will prioritize attracting investments in high-tech industries such as semiconductor and electric vehicles to solidify its status as a manufacturing hub in Southeast Asia within the global supply chain.

Sikh Shamsul Ibrahim, the Senior Executive Director of the Malaysian Investment Development Authority (MIDA), made this announcement during the Kuala Lumpur Economic Forum. He emphasized that in the face of ongoing trade wars and geopolitical tensions, Malaysia’s goal is to leverage the realignment and redistribution of global supply chains.

Ibrahim further stated that they are placing a strong emphasis on enhancing supply chain resilience and fostering closer collaborations with their trade partners. He also pointed out that they are actively exploring priority sectors with a particular focus on high-growth industries, including semiconductors, electric vehicles, and renewable energy.

In addition, Sikh Shamsul Ibrahim highlighted the government’s objective to introduce tiered corporate tax incentive measures, as per the 2024 budget plan, to attract investments in high-value and high-growth industries.

In September of this year, Malaysia unveiled a new industrial master plan that includes a $19.91 billion investment over seven years to advance its manufacturing capabilities. Key sectors in this initiative encompass electronics, chemicals, and electric vehicles, with the country also aiming to create 3.3 million new job opportunities.

(Image credit: Pixabay)

TrendForce, the independent new energy research agency, forecasts that capacity for 210mm products will reach 57% in 2023. The penetration of 600W+ high-power modules is clearly accelerating, setting a distinct direction for both the industry chain and market.

As technology iteration is an essential force in driving industry development, an increasing number of module makers are now producing 210mm modules, marching into the 600W+ era.

More than 80% of module makers deploy 210mm technology as 600W+ high-power modules become a global standard

The 600W+ is now dominating major PV exhibitions around the world. 75% of the 600W+ products showcased by mainstream module makers at RE+2022 were fitted with 210mm wafers, demonstrating the advantage of the 210mm technology, and 30 companies had more than 40 600W products on display at Intersolar South America at the end of August. A similar pattern was seen at Intersolar Europe and SNEC.

According to TrendForce, more than 52 module makers (>80%) worldwide can now produce 210mm products. As indicated by TrendForce, capacity of large-sized modules has continued to expand this year, and new capacity is compatible with sizes of up to 210mm. Because of the extensive compatibility of 210mm cell and module technology, cutting-edge technologies such as TOPCon and HJT could be adopted, and module power output is likely to reach 700W+ soon.

Trina Solar, as the first mover of 210mm modules, recently put 210mm n-type capacity into mass production, reinforcing the company’s competitiveness with next-generation n-type cell technology. The refinement in 210mm products and n-type technology will further improve efficiency and cut costs.

Accumulated shipment of 210mm modules reached 50GW in first nine months of 2022

The production of 210mm modules is growing rapidly as the downstream high-power module market flourishes. In the first nine months of the year 50GW of 210mm cell modules were shipped. More than 76GW of such modules has been shipped as of third quarter 2022, and shipments were expected to accelerate in the last three months of 2022.

210mm module capacity to reach 57% by 2023

As indicated by TrendForce, large-sized modules (182mm and 210mm) are estimated to account for 512GW of capacity during 2022 at a ratio of 83%, of which 210mm capacity accounts for 287GW at 46%, representing year-on-year growth of 16%. Large-sized modules (182mm and 210mm), with their successive completion in capacity deployment next year, will occupy 89% of ratio then, and 210mm modules are likely to dominate, with estimated capacity of 466GW at 57%.

TrendForce forecasts that capacity of 210mm modules will continue to surge in 2023 and reach 66.04% by 2025, when 182mm module capacity will fall to 30%. In terms of wafers and cells, shipments of large-sized variations will continue to climb and dominate the market. New highs in global shipments of 210mm can be expected in the near future.

600W+ modules supreme in all-scenario for both utility and non-utility plants

High-power modules are widely used because of their superior LCOE and BOS costs. According to TrendForce, 600W+ high-power modules are becoming the trend in power stations, with 210mm technology seen as the first choice in making their 600W+ modules, which can reduce LCOE by up to 4.1%.

600W+ modules are yielding compatible solutions by adapting to different installation environments and projects that include ground-mounted power stations and distributed settings.

600W+ high-power modules lead the way as they deliver low LCOE

Low LCOE has been an ultimate target for the industry chain, and 600W+ modules that are equipped with high power, high efficiency, high energy yield, and high reliability can effectively reduce LCOE. Comparing 600W+ modules and 500W+ modules, the former have increased power output by 125-130W and increased module efficiency by 0.3-0.5%. 600W+ modules are also superior in energy yield, evidenced in test by their increase of 1.51~2.1% in single watt power generation. In addition, in five rigorous tests, 600W+ modules were proven to retain their highly reliable performance even in extreme climates.

Trina Solar, a pioneer in 210mm cell technology, has demonstrated to the market its solid strength and capability in the 600W+ field. As of third quarter 2022, Trina Solar has shipped 40GW 210mm modules, ranking first in the industry, with a total of 120GW of global modules shipments since its foundation.

(AmCham Taiwan｜Contributing Writer: David Stinson & Angelica Oung)  Taiwan has some of the world’s lowest electricity prices. The question is why? With no domestic energy reserves, every lump of coal and drop of liquefied natural gas (LNG) – the mainstays of Taiwanese power generation – must be imported. Yet even as the prices of those commodities have soared on the global market, the price for residential power in Taiwan has stayed at NT$2.6253 per kilowatt-hour – a number that has remained unchanged since 2018.

Although the state-run Taiwan Power Co. (Taipower) is traded on the Taiwan stock market, key decisions – including the price of power – are out of the company’s control. Instead, Taiwan’s electricity prices are set by a 17-member Power Tariff Review Committee, made up of experts and academics. The committee, which convenes twice a year, has a price formula that allows the rate to be increased by 3% every six months, or 6% annually. But for the past four years, it has consistently declined to raise prices, even as global oil prices have increased significantly since 2021.

International development bodies generally now advise against price subsidies for electricity. Experts argue that suppressing prices is an inefficient way to help people in the lower-income bracket – since the rich tend to consume more power, energy subsidies are poorly targeted. Moreover, making energy artificially cheap encourages the overuse of a scarce resource. Worst of all, taxpayers eventually end up paying the final price when electricity revenue cannot cover the cost of fuel and power generation infrastructure maintenance.

The reason for Taiwan’s continued suppression of electricity prices in the face of rising costs is political, says Chen Jong-Shun, research assistant at the Center for Green Economy at the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER). Low electricity prices have long been seen as an implicit part of the social contract in Taiwan – a way for the state to care for the people.

“In fact, the amounts involved are not large,” says Chen, referring to the public expenditures required to keep prices from rising, as well as the public benefits from these subsidies. “The problem is that the costs are so widespread. Any breakfast stall, for instance, can see when prices increase, so it becomes a political issue.”

Price-sensitive voters are not the only constituency lobbying for discounted electricity prices. Taiwan’s export-driven economy also benefits from the low prices, with industrial rates ranking sixth lowest in the world. This impact is particularly significant for Taiwan’s highly successful semiconductor industry, which is exceptionally power-intensive. Power subsidies are therefore historically an important part of Taiwan’s economic development, says Chen.

Passing the buck

As electricity usage rises, economic planners face urgent questions about both the environmental and financial sustainability of Taiwan’s price support policy. State-owned oil refiner CPC Taiwan Corp. posted losses of NT$43.4 billion last year due to an ongoing government-mandated freeze on the price of natural gas, despite the commodity’s rising global cost. CPC is the natural gas supplier for Taipower, Taiwan’s primary electricity producer, and sold gas to Taipower for an average purchase price of NT$8.2929 per cubic meter in 2021. According to an April 12 statement by newly appointed CPC Chairman Lee Shun-chin, by the end of April, CPC’s cumulative losses could total NT$65 billion – equivalent to about half of its paid-in capital – if prices remain unchanged.

Although CPC recently raised its sales price of natural gas for electricity generation to NT$12.0873 per cubic meter, the number is still much lower than the company’s current purchase price of about NT$20. There are few signs that international prices will decrease anytime soon, and Taipower will be unable to absorb even the current pricing on an ongoing basis.

After earning NT$48 billion from operations last year, Taipower reported operational losses for the first two months of 2022, when the price it paid for natural gas was NT$11.4033 per cubic meter. Meanwhile, lack of profits has caused the upkeep and improvement of the nation’s power grid to be neglected.

Deputy Minister Tseng Wen-Sheng of the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) said in March that at least NT$100 billion would be needed this year to increase grid stability. Premier Su Tseng-Chang noted that this sum would be paid by the government, in contrast to previous years when it showed up on Taipower’s balance sheets. However, the final allocation of costs between Tai-power and the government has yet to be determined.

The National Development Council (NDC) has proposed that the state sector invest a collective NT$440 billion in energy-related upgrades by 2030, which will be an ongoing financial burden. Taipower has accumulated reserves worth NT$40 billion, an amount that can only temporarily support the upgrades. The utility has also yet to write off the estimated NT$285 billion loss from Taiwan’s fourth nuclear power plant, following a referendum vote last December to scuttle the project. Overall, it appears that the government’s attempts to stabilize prices have only created additional instability.

The MOEA has recognized that the current situation is a problem. When the Power Tariff Review Committee voted to freeze the price again, MOEA Minister Wang Mei-hua described electricity prices as “too cheap.” The committee is convened under the auspices of the MOEA and the government appoints nine of its 17 members, though it is supposed to act independently.

Taiwan has made sudden corrections to electricity prices before, although politics has always been in the background. Shortly after winning a presidential election, the Ma Ying-Jeou administration raised power prices twice in 2012 and 2013, amounting to a total increase of 16.7%. The 2018 price freeze also appeared to be politically timed, occurring shortly after a minor price increase following the election of President Tsai Ing-Wen. It seems no administration dares raise rates in the runup to an election. And the present moment is particularly tricky, as campaigning for the 2024 presidential election will begin almost immediately after the “nine-in-one” local elections this November. No clear political window for rebalancing thus exists until later in 2024.

Meanwhile, the EU is considering future border carbon tariffs to harmonize international energy transformation efforts. In response, Taiwan’s Environmental Protection Agency has proposed a fee of US$10 per ton of carbon. This amount is easily eclipsed by the current price subsidies, as well as any conceivable price subsidies in the near future. Indeed, Taiwan’s practice of subsidizing electricity prices contradicts the government’s ambitious stated intentions to reach net zero by 2050. Partially as a result of the subsidies, Taiwan currently has the fifth-highest carbon emissions per capita among the world’s top 21 economies.

But system reform is in the works. By 2025, Taipower will be split into two entities: one for generation and another for distribution. This mechanism should allow for more market-based pricing, although many details remain undetermined, including practical responsibility for grid stability. This step will nevertheless mark a milestone in Taiwan’s reform of its power market.

No relief in sight

Taiwan’s energy transition will take place in an environment of persistently high fossil fuel prices. Global oil and gas prices are set to rise in the medium term as a result of pandemic recovery and, more recently, the war in Ukraine. These increases follow a long period of reduced investment in capacity after several years of pain for producers and are thus unlikely to be quickly counteracted.

Liang Chi-Yuan, an economics professor at National Central University and a former Minister Without Portfolio, anticipates that supply will decrease faster than demand as the world moves toward decarbonization, resulting in a seller’s market that could last a decade or more.

“In order to achieve net-zero greenhouse emissions by 2050, the International Energy Agency (IEA) suggests that starting from 2021, all new development of coal and oil fields should stop, which will decrease the supply of oil,” he says. “However, it also suggests that sales restrictions on news cars fueled by oil come much later, in 2035. These two factors might lead to supply shortages until 2035.”

Some opportunities for short-term adjustments by consumers exist, given functioning price signals. CIER’s Chen points to old air conditioners as low-hanging fruit, as they can become significantly less efficient after just a decade. Air conditioners were partially blamed for one of the major outages in May last year.

In the longer term, the energy transition will not only require changes in consumption patterns but also greater changes in industry structure. In some cases – such as last year’s referendum, which rejected nuclear power – prices will only be a background factor for individual decisions with complex upstream and downstream consequences. In the view of many experts, it is time for Taiwanese power consumers to start seeing its true price. Nevertheless, further steps to rationalize the market will take place in the context of financial pressure as the bills for many years of deferred reform come due.

Source: https://topics.amcham.com.tw/2022/05/the-high-cost-of-taiwans-low-electricity-prices/ 

(AmCham Taiwan｜Contributing Writer: Angelica Oung) Last September, an article in Taiwan Business TOPICS posed the question of whether Taiwan is facing a looming power crunch. Just half a year later, the question has changed to “is Taiwan’s power crunch already here?” Indeed, the authorities have also rephrased their assurances from future tense (“Taiwan will not run short of electricity”) to present tense (“Taiwan isn’t short of electricity”). Despite the reassurances, repeated outages, pressure to curb consumption, and government projections all show that the adequacy of Taiwan’s power supply is becoming increasingly precarious.

A major blackout in early March added to the list of recent major outages, which also included two island-wide rolling blackouts that occurred within a week in May last year. Even before the March incident, however, AmCham’s 2022 Business Climate Survey found that energy security was a top-of-mind issue for members, with 61% asking the Tsai Ing-wen administration to prioritize energy even over COVID-19 pandemic control, cross-Strait relations, and trade agreements with the U.S. and other partners. A total of 78% of respondents expressed concern about power supply sufficiency, while 70.9% said they worried about the resiliency of Taiwan’s grid.

The three major blackouts, now known as 513, 517, and 303 for the dates on which they occurred, have been joined by a series of minor outages that have become a staple of media coverage.

“Power outages don’t mean we have a power shortage,” said Minister of Economic Affairs Wang Mei-hua in a recent television appearance. “Rather, we need to improve on aspects of our power delivery.” Operator errors, a fragile grid, and animal disturbance of electrical equipment are to blame, said the minister – not insufficiency of power generation.

Yeh Tsung-kuang, a professor at National Tsing Hua University’s Department of Engineering and System Science, disagrees. “Accidents have always happened, but now they have an outsized impact because we no longer have enough spare power capacity in our system to act as a buffer,” he says. As long as the government remains “in denial” about Taiwan’s “escalating power shortfall,” Taiwan’s power woes will only worsen, he adds. “As it is, it’s already too late for Taiwan to avert a crisis.”

To back up his assertion, Yeh points to a report on Taiwan’s electricity supply and demand published by the Bureau of Energy last May. Specifically, he points to a graph showing power-producing facilities that are slated to either go offline or be added to Taiwan’s grid through 2027.

Six more natural gas plants totaling 7.23GW should be completed according to the schedule. But Yeh warns that there is unlikely to be enough fuel to keep them running. “In a way, it doesn’t matter how many new natural gas generators we build,” he says. “Until 2025, we won’t be able to import enough gas to satisfy more than our existing generators.”

The use of natural gas for power generation is a crucial part of President Tsai’s energy policy. When she came into office in 2016, Tsai announced that nuclear power, which then accounted for 12% of Taiwan’s power mix, would be phased out by 2025. The use of dirty, polluting coal would decrease from around 45% to 30%. The proportion reserved for gas, which burns cleanly and releases only around half the greenhouse gas that coal does, would be raised from about 31% to 50%. The remaining 20% would consist of renewable energy sources.

For this “50/30/20 by 2025” plan to work, Taiwan will need to “step on the gas.” But every single molecule of natural gas coming to Taiwan will have to be in the form of liquefied natural gas (LNG), and the infrastructure to receive those shipments is already stretched thin.

Taiwan receives about 300 LNG shipments a year, according to a major energy executive who wishes to remain anonymous. “We can’t afford to miss a single one,” he says.

There are currently only two LNG receiving terminals in Taiwan, both operating at above 100% of their registered capacity. Together, they can hold around a 14-day supply of gas in the winter, and seven days in the summer, when demand is higher. It is impossible to safely reduce that reserve, the executive says. And at the earliest, relief will not come until 2025 when construction of the third LNG terminal, in Taoyuan’s Datan, is due to be completed.

Will a third terminal solve Taiwan’s gas shortage problem? Not completely. Ideally, six terminals would be required to accommodate the amount of natural gas Taiwan aspires to burn, while allowing a one-month supply of LNG to be kept in reserve. But the fourth and fifth receiving terminals have not yet emerged from the Environmental Impact Assessment planning stage, and the location of the sixth remains a question mark.

The problem has been years in the making. It seems that nobody in Taiwan wants to live near any kind of power infrastructure. Local NIMBY (“not in my backyard”) opposition and environmental concerns have been a potent combination that has stalled the construction of everything from LNG terminals to wind farms. It takes at least 48 months to build an LNG receiving terminal after all the permissions have been obtained, estimates the executive.

Delayed renewables

At the start of the Tsai administration, renewable energy was held out as the solution to the power production gap that would be left by the phaseout of nuclear energy. However, Minister Wang told the legislature in March that Taiwan would miss its target of renewable energy accounting for 20% of power generation by 2025; she subsequently lowered the expected proportion to 15%. “The goal for installed capacity remains unchanged,” said Wang. “The denominator just got bigger.”

In other words, Taiwan is projected to use a lot more electricity in 2025 than initially anticipated. The government has taken advantage of the U.S.-China trade dispute to welcome home manufacturers pulling up stakes from China or reducing the amount of production there. Amid a global chip shortage, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) and other semiconductor manufacturers also moved to expand production in Taiwan. Chipmaking is an especially energy-consuming industry.

In terms of solar energy, the government is retaining its goal of 20GW of installed capacity by 2025, and recently added a new goal of 30GW by 2030. These are ambitious targets that many in the solar industry consider unrealistic.

“Here we are in 2022 with around 8GWs, having already missed a number of previous goals,” says Lisa Cheng, head of Taiwan investment at Vena Energy, a renewable energy company with solar projects in Taiwan. “It’s not that government goals can’t be met, but we’re not going to do it under the current regulatory conditions.”

Developers of solar in Taiwan quickly discovered that it is almost impossible to build large-scale ground-mounted projects that are completed quickly and give the best returns. For example, the Council of Agriculture has blocked large solar projects that it believes encroach on its territory by taking up farmland, even if the land is not currently under cultivation. Instead, solar development in Taiwan has been relegated to initiating projects that are smaller and less controversial but also slower to install and less efficient, such as rooftop installations and aquavoltaics (solar panels placed above fish farms).

The situation never fully returned to normal after the 513 and 517 blackouts of 2021. Veteran energy reporter Liu Kwang-yin happened to be in the office of a petrochemical executive the day after the 303 blackout when an aide came in with a message from the Vice Premier: would the executive take a call from a manager at Taiwan’s state-owned energy utility, Taipower?

“Absolutely not!” said the executive unequivocally, “I won’t take calls from any of them!”

Liu, who wrote about the incident for Commonwealth Magazine, explains that Taipower was hoping to persuade the executive to cut production during peak hours, when demand on the grid is most likely to exceed supply.

There is already a “demand response” mechanism in place to tempt significant users to shift their power use to off-peak windows. Taipower offers a discount of up to NT$10 per kilowatt-hour (kWh), almost five times the usual commercial rate, for large users not to use power when the grid is likely to be stressed. But that is generally not enough of an incentive for industry, which loathes taking production offline.

“Each Taipower manager is responsible for negotiating with their own list of large users,” explains Liu. “They try to form relationships so that when push comes to shove, those large users are more inclined to help out.” The calls started around the time of the 2021 blackouts and have since become routine.

This is not the only extreme measure Taipower has taken to make electrical ends meet since the blackouts. If you live in Taiwan and notice your lights dimming slightly before returning to full strength, you are not imagining things. Taipower sometimes reduces the grid’s voltage as a last resort if the island is running low on power. Legally, it can drop the voltage by up to 3%.

“They are doing that more and more often, and it could harm appliances such as compressors for refrigerators,” says Yeh. “But what’s more serious is that it shows how tight the power supply already is right now.”

“What’s interesting is that the voltage reduction sometimes happens even while Taiwan’s grid is ‘green’ for adequate capacity,” says Liu. “Why is that?”

Electricity is a unique commodity that in practice must be produced just before it is consumed. (Although storage is a potential future option and battery technology for electric storage systems has advanced in recent years, such facilities are still too expensive and limited in capacity to have an impact at grid scale). Because of the disastrous consequences of demand outpacing supply, more electricity must always be produced than consumed. To ensure a surplus of energy, utilities such as Taipower maintain what is called an “operating reserve,” or the ability to generate power beyond the anticipated peak demand.

At an operating reserve of 10%, the grid is considered to be at a “green light.” When the operating reserve reaches 6-10%, the grid is at a “yellow light.” If it ever dips below 6%, that is grounds for an “amber light” and is considered an emergency. And yet, both the 513 and 303 blackouts happened during a “green light,” while only 517 occurred at a time of “yellow light.”

“The daily operating reserves are a sham,” says Yeh. “If you cannot ramp up a power-producing asset quickly, it shouldn’t be counted as operating reserves, but that is what Taipower does now as a matter of course.”

Power plants that are slow to ramp up and down, like coal or nuclear, are known as “baseload.” Plants like combined-cycle gas turbine facilities take a moderate amount of time to warm up and are considered “mid-load.” Finally, power sources that are quickly adjustable, such as hydroelectricity and open-cycle gas turbine generators, are considered “peak-load.” In order to maximize grid stability, operators generally rely chiefly on solidly-firing baseload generators, while leaving slack in the mid-load and peak-load for either unforeseen demand or an accident that unexpectedly interrupts power generation or transmission.

This scenario is not necessarily the norm in Taiwan, however. Because coal plants are so polluting and contribute to serious health complications for nearby residents, there is tremendous political pressure to burn as little coal as possible while vigorously turning to gas-fired plants to meet demand.

An unexpected surge in demand is the biggest challenge. If the source of the operating reserve is a combined-cycle gas plant, production can be ramped up in less than 30 minutes. But if the operating reserve comes from an inactive coal plant, it could take at least three to six hours before any electricity is produced – too long to prevent a blackout. Nevertheless, Taipower includes spare coal capacity in its daily operating reserves.

In the case of 513, even the hydroelectricity capacity in the operating reserve failed to come through. Taiwan was in the middle of a historic drought last spring, and Taipower was unable to use that reserve as nearly parched dams needed the water. Yeh estimates that if Taipower counted only capacity that could truly be dispatched in a timely manner in its calculation of the daily reserve, Taiwan’s operating reserve would be “under 6% most days.”

Taipower’s response

“I don’t think the media scrutiny is fair,” says Taipower Spokesman Chang Ting-shu. “If some bird strike causes a localized outage, that is seized upon as more proof that we’re out of power. The press magnifies every minor incident.”

The official Taipower response is that operator errors caused the 513 and 303 blackouts, while 517 was caused by “a faulty estimate of peak use” due to an unseasonably hot May last year. Basically, the utility denies that insufficient power supply was ever the issue for those events, though Chang confirms that Taipower does make calls to large users to request that they avoid using power at peak times.

“Demand response is a legitimate avenue of power management, something that advanced countries do and something Taiwan is trying to do more of,” he says. “It’s about shaving the peaks and filling in the valleys.”

As for voltage drops, Chang notes they have become less common this year, as the rainy 2022 Taiwan is enjoying allows for the liberal use of hydropower to bridge any last-minute gaps between supply and demand.

“It’s true that last year when it was very dry, we had a lot of difficulties,” says Chang. “Supply got tight, and we had to drop voltage quite a few times.” However, with the dams replete with water that can be used for hydroelectric generation almost instantaneously, he is cautiously optimistic. “I think we are going to be okay this summer,” he says.

To Liu of CommonWealth, it is not productive to dwell on whether Taiwan is indeed short on electricity. “If a household has to make calls every day to make sure they don’t default on their loans, we can argue whether that family is technically solvent, but obviously they are not in great financial shape,” she says. And just like a struggling household, the first order of business for Taiwan should be to implement some fiscal discipline. “There are so many things they should do, but the first must be to raise the price of electricity,” she maintains.

Tsing Hua’s Yeh, who is also a professor of nuclear engineering, has a different view. “The most obvious thing would be to not retire the power plants we plan to retire,” he says, suggesting Taiwan’s existing nuclear power plants could have their life extended by 20 years or more. “Many plants just like them have received such extensions in the U.S., but I’m afraid they’ll just extend the life of the coal plants instead.” Meanwhile, Vena’s Cheng posits that with greater political will from the government, renewable energy could be a more effective option. “Please give us the land and let us build,” she says. “We could be doing so much more, faster.”

(Source: https://topics.amcham.com.tw/2022/05/how-can-taiwan-avoid-an-energy-crisis/)