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Taiwan is heading toward an energy crunch?
- churchill 2y agoNothing annoys me like these foolish headlines. Running out of electricity? Then generate some more! With grid-scale solar and batteries (Chinese production is driving prices down aggressively) you can spin up gigawatt-scale plants almost overnight, until you can cover the shortfall with nuclear or thermal plants. And, it's not like TSMC is using electricity clandestinely: they're a fantastically profitable business probably buying electricity wholesale. So, stop the stupid handwringing and expand production.
- sampullman 2y agoThere's not a whole lot of space in Taiwan for huge solar farms. They were close to having nuclear, but there's strong political pushback. Offshore wind seems to be doing well, at least.
- dv_dt 2y agoSolar farms don't take a huge amount of space. The roof tops of the chip factories are probably a perfectly fine place to augment the chip factory electric use
- CatWChainsaw 2y agoHello "augment" I see you've been doing some heavy lifting lately, looking good.
- Retric 2y agoSolar doesn’t need that much space. Nuclear is about 10x as energy dense in the US, so it’s better but not as much as generally portrayed. However unlike nuclear you can toss solar just about anywhere there’s a little land or even a lake. Nuclear needs lot contiguous space with access to water for cooling and big reservoirs for safety etc.
- XorNot 2y agoA chip fabricator cannot run off intermittent power. It can't shutdown quickly, nor safely.
- Retric 2y agoYou can get 99.99+% uptime from a system only fed solar power. It’s the same cost vs reliability tradeoff made everywhere else. France recently went weeks with every single nuclear power plant in the country offline, but the system was designed to cope with such downtime.
- bobthepanda 2y agoFrance covered that by importing power from the rest of Europe. Taiwan doesn’t have that option as an island whose closest friendly neighbor is hundreds of kilometers away.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Retric 2y agoWhich suggests ramping up nuclear would be problematic in the long term for them. At the beginning you can get great uptime but eventually you face years like this: https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/IMG/pdf/wnisr2022-figure28_nuke_france_dailyunavailabilities2021.pdf https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/IMG/pdf/wnisr2022-figure2...
- bobthepanda 2y agoThat’s probably more of an artefact of France building exact copies of the same design within a relatively short timeframe (ten years) so they all shared the exact same design flaws and started showing their age at the same time
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- silisili 2y agoYou mentioned offshore wind, is offshore solar not a thing? Seems it'd be rather easy to float a farm of them...easier than floating a giant windmill, at least.
- pvaldes 2y agoChina would find an excuse to attack anything put in "their" sea.
- huac 2y agoshouldn't there be more clouds over ocean, as that is where the clouds tend to form?
- metaphor 2y ago> Seems it'd be rather easy to float a farm of them Geopolitical threats aside, I imagine floating a farm would be the least of challenges[1]. [1] https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/bams/80/1/1520-0477_1999_080_0067_tatcua_2_0_co_2.xml https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/bams/80/1/1520-04...
- gomerspiles 2y agoGeo location aside, putting things off shore is really a way to drive up cost such as maintenance like mad and it makes even less sense when you are working with large surfaces rather than something designed around having height and wind tolerance.
- churchill 2y ago100KM² of panels (10GW) will generate 22,000 GWh, or roughly 10% of Taiwan's current electricity demand. That is, a 10KM * 10KM field (not necessarily all in on place) that takes up just 0.3% of the island is all you need. Last year, TSMC used 25,000GWh, or 12.5% of Taiwan's electricity, so a 10GW solar project like stated above will take care of it. If you need dollar figures: Chinese PV prices have dropped to 10 cents/watt while LFP cells are down to $53/kwh. So, $1b will get you 10GW worth of panels, while $4.4b will get you 8 hours of storage. So, roughly $10b to completely go off grid.
- wkat4242 2y agoWould they be able to procure that many panels from China when they know they'll end up in Taiwan though?
- churchill 2y agoTaiwan's money spends just as good as anyone's money. That's why Europe is still burning Russian gas while in a proxy war that's seen hundreds of thousands killed. It's only in Hollywood movies that you refuse perfectly good money for geopolitics.
- generic92034 2y ago> It's only in Hollywood movies that you refuse perfectly good money for geopolitics. So why did Russia stop delivering gas via Nord Stream 1 from 09/2022 on (before the sabotage)?
- diogocp 2y agoBecause they weren't getting paid in "perfectly good money" (they were getting paid into frozen EU bank accounts).
- ArnoVW 2y agoAm I wrong to say that north stream 1 & 2 were put out of commission and Europe procures it’s gaz now via LNG that flows via the huge terminals that were built after 2022? The Russians are managing to bypass restrictions to some degree using their “dark fleet” but that’s oil, and hardly a case of Europe continuing as if nothing were.
- foobarian 2y agoI love that Taiwan has 20 peaks over 3km. Such a small island for that kind of geography!
- lugu 2y agoGaz would be perfect if there wasn't a risk of Chinese blockade. Renewable would be great if there was land and no typhoon. Nuclear would be great if quakes were not a thing. The problem isn't to price electricity. It is to find a viable long term strategy for an open society having to mitigate multiple risks.
- churchill 2y agoAll these issues you just raised are not unique to Taiwan - everyone in the region has them yet they're expanding energy production. I mean China, specifically. If you want a zero-risk energy source, you can live in the dark, stumbling around with candles. And it's more environmentally friendly :)
- lm28469 2y agoYou might want to check a map if you don't see the difference between China and Taiwan. It's an island, it's small as fuck and half of it is a mountain range
- cladopa 2y agoThe population density of Taiwan is 649 people per square kilometre. In the US it is 38. So that means in the US you can use renovables and the same space needs to satisfy the demand of 17 times less people than in Taiwan. In other words: it doesn't make any sense in Taiwan. Also It doesn't make any sense to close your nuclear plants, specially when China could invade you any day of the week and destroy anything you have offshore in hours. if the US abandons Ukraine support after two years, it would mean that it will abandon Taiwan too. Nuclear deterrent is real.
- churchill 2y agoUnless Taiwan is crammed so full that people can't move, they can easily source 200 KM² to increase their electricity capacity by 10% (i.e., roughly 20TWh). if they realise it's a national security/economic competitiveness issue, they will solve it. Otherwise, what do you suggest they do? Nothing? Or keep hand-wringing with articles like this?
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> they can easily source 200 KM² to increase their electricity capacity by 10% Solar panels are by definition easy to see and thus knock out remotely. > what do you suggest they do Nukes. We’ve seen from Ukraine that they’re given special status even in war.
- Panzer04 2y agoWhat's that even supposed to mean? Renewable generation would be much more secure than comparable centralised generation because you'd need so many more resources to knock it out. If i were an adversary I'd much rather my enemy source everything from a single NPP than hundreds of square km of solar.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> you'd need so many more resources to knock it out If you're America, yes. If you're an island nation defending against China one hundred and ten miles away, you don't have the air defence resources to protect your entire island. (And they do have the resources to knock hout hundreds of square kilometres of solar.)
- chollida1 2y ago> With grid-scale solar and batteries (Chinese production is driving prices down aggressively) you can spin up gigawatt-scale plants almost overnight, until you can cover the shortfall with nuclear or thermal plants. Can you show an existence proof of someone spinning up gigawatts of energy overnight? And solar doesn't help with night time and batteries haven't hit giagawatt scale yet, you might be a bit over your skiis with your claim here.
- mgiampapa 2y agoWell technically, every time the sun comes up those panels start producing all over the world. FYI, it happens because the earth is spinning.
- Ringz 2y ago„China is installing the wind and solar equivalent of five large nuclear power stations per week„ https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2024-07-16/chinas-renewable-energy-boom-breaks-records/104086640 https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2024-07-16/chinas-renewa... The report is here: https://climateenergyfinance.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/MONTHLY-CHINA-ENERGY-UPDATE-_-China-to-Achieve-its-2030-Energy-Target-in-July-2024.pdf https://climateenergyfinance.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/...
- simonw 2y ago"With grid-scale solar and batteries..." From the article: > “The problem with solar in Taiwan is that we don’t have a big area. We have the same population as Australia and use the same amount of electricity, but we are only half the size of Tasmania, and 79 percent of Taiwan is mountainous, so land acquisition is difficult.” Rooftop solar is expensive, and roof space is sometimes needed for other things, such as helicopter pads, public utilities, or water tanks.
- thatsit 2y agohelicopter pads… are you serious? so the whole freaking country is a helicopter pad? Maybe a warm welcome for the CCP? It’s not that hard putting some solar panels on buildings. Helicopter pads as a general excuse is the dumbest i have ever heard.
- Barrin92 2y ago>so the whole freaking country is a helicopter pad? the whole country is people living in 10 story apartment buildings. Taiwan looks like this[1], not like suburban Texas where everyone lives in 2k square feet mansions. The very limited roof space/dweller ratio you have in a country like this is indeed used for water storage, helicopter pads, what have you. If you're in a country so sparsely populated where home's are so large that a house can power itself with solar maybe roof solar makes some difference, in a place where you can slap 2 solar panels on a building of 300 people it really doesn't. [1]https://img.static-kl.com/images/media/54842792-60B3-4C6E-A925757FCD1B121A https://img.static-kl.com/images/media/54842792-60B3-4C6E-A9...
- wordofx 2y agolol it’s not running out of electricity. Edit: I’m downvoted but this isn’t even a topic in Taiwan. They don’t have power issues. This is just a rubbish article.
- bagels 2y agoWhich of the facts of the article are incorrect? Does the conclusion not follow from the facts? What's wrong with the article?
- jncfhnb 2y agoThe article doesn’t actually make the claim that they are running out of electricity.
- wtallis 2y agoComments that consist of just "lol, no" are bad comments. You've been doing that a lot in various discussions. HN has higher standards. Please try to make your comments substantive.
- samus 2y agoTaiwan is sitting on the Pacific Ring of Fire. Surely there are resources of geothermal energy that could be tapped?
- giardini 2y agoTaiwan has 4 nuclear plants that IIRC they've chosen to not run *purely for political reasons*. The (imo crazy and crooked-as-hell) "green party" is currently in power). Once another party takes over, the nukes will likely be fired up. Taiwan can make all the power it needs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Taiwan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Taiwan
- adw 2y agoBlue and Green in Taiwan do not relate to environmentalism, they relate to the position of the party with respect to the mainland.
- topspin 2y agoSetting aside the "blue green" matter, the question remains: what exactly are the "political reasons" at play here. That phrase raises my suspicions. Which party, what is their alignment and what is their problem with nuclear power?
- kenhwang 2y agoGreen is the independent Taiwan/nationalist party. Blue is the anti-war/friendliness with China party. The anti-nuclear sentiment is more due to the age/state of the reactors and concerns over earthquake safety after the Fukushima nuclear accident and the inability for the island to store/handle/dispose of waste. I don't think the state of nuclear power will change much even if the blues gain power. Taiwanese politics has a way of making the minority party always be against the status quo for some issues just to be a pain for the majority party, and their stance on nuclear power tends to flip flop depending on who's in power.
- tsudounym 2y agoIt really makes sense for the DPP (Green) to be anti-nuclear. Mainland China is using Westinghouse AP1000 designs from the US for their nuke plants. Taiwan is friendlier with the US and can get a nice discount to license the same AP1000..
- baxtr 2y agoI love how everyone on this thread is giving energy advice to the country that "makes the world's computer chips". Surely they have a couple of smart people on that island…
- htk 2y agoDoesn't mean they're making the decisions.
- Dylan16807 2y agoCountries don't always act very rationally.
- cranky908canuck 2y agoI reckon that solar chips are approaching potato chips in terms of (relative to CPU) techological sophistication ... IOW, TSMC has better things to do than panels.
- numpad0 2y agoI think it's more like how would one feel about a passenger plane that a rocket scientist wouldn't touch or ride, than if it makes sense for them to build one
- night862 2y agoI agree, this seems an extremely emotional issue. There’s a lot to care about wrt Taiwan, I will say.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y agoYeah but can they create a web based and ad infested CRUD app with javascript?! The ego on display in the programming world is just astonishing.
- leptons 2y agoImporting the most advanced silicon fabs from other countries (ASML, which makes the machines that make the world's computer chips) is a different skill than building power plants. Even the nuclear power stations they have were built by General Electric and Westinghouse. The reason Taiwan is valuable is because they are allowed to import western tech that China is not allowed to have, and the labor is somehow cheaper there to operate it.
- gtvwill 2y agoI really wish australia would get into silicon foundry and semiconductor manufacturing businesses. We have the space, we have the geo stability ( lots of our space is really old and very stable from a geological standpoint...it finished moving yonks ago), we produce most of the precursor compinents in their raw forms in absolute masses or have the capacity and resources to do so and we also have the political stability. But alas, our politicians are short sited, our companies lack the willingness to make it happen. It feels like a massively missed opportunity.
- qntmfred 2y agoAny chance you've seen this, or have a personal take to add? https://youtu.be/QByN_XJIn8s https://youtu.be/QByN_XJIn8s
- Mengkudulangsat 2y agoFoundries are supremely water-hungry too. I recall the Abu Dhabi - Global Foundries experiment didn't work out.
- gtvwill 2y agoWe got more coastline available that you can poke a stick at, much like the greenhouses next to the nullabor in south aus you just solar desalination your water and we have a near infinite supply of water available. https://www.sundropfarms.com/our-technology/ https://www.sundropfarms.com/our-technology/
- ksec 2y agoBut then Australia is a country where getting Solar Power with such a vast space is difficult due to all sort of political reasons doesn't seems very friendly to all the manufacturing requirement for modern Foundry.
- gtvwill 2y agohttps://www.canstarblue.com.au/solar/solar-farms-australia/ https://www.canstarblue.com.au/solar/solar-farms-australia/ Actually we have heaps of fairly reasonable sized solar farms both built and operating and also in development right now. The politics your talking about is actually just that...politics. It's the optics of opposition. We are cranking out solar and approving decent sized installs all the time. The opposition just likes to make it out like their is kickback and it's not happening in order to back up their own political view and make themselves feel good. Business on the other hand is churning on with rolling it out and making bank from it.
- jppope 2y agoWired with the click bait.
- dang 2y agoWe've replaced the title with a less baity substring from the subtitle.