Chinese Taipei is short of its own energy resources and highly dependent on fossil energy resources. Facing global climate change, Chinese Taipei must conform to the wave of international energy transformation. In order to promote energy transformation, the central government not only legislated the 2025 renewable energy promotion target of 27 GW, but also completed the drafting of the “White Paper on Energy transformation”, which will be as one of the important policies and measures to promote energy transformation in renewable energy to promote more solar photovoltaics as the leading role, renewable energy promotion target set in 2025, accounts for 20 GW.
The success of the energy transformation also plays a key role in local energy governance, so Taoyuan City Government set up a Green Energy Office on February 6, 2018.Integrate the green energy and energy saving policies of the city, establish a single window for promoting energy transformation, and take “improving local renewable energy settings”, “enhancing the power efficiency of the city” and strengthening local energy governance capacity “as the main axis of promoting energy transformation policy. Taoyuan is the largest industrial city in Chinese Taipei. In order to ensure that everyone can obtain economic and reliable sustainable energy, Taoyuan City put forward the “Taoyuan Green Electricity City Project” in the SDGs Voluntary Review Report (VLR), and won the gold award of the “2021 TSAA – Sustainable Development Goal Action Award” rated by Taiwan Sustainable Energy Research Foundation. In terms of solar photovoltaic promotion, Taoyuan City successfully overcomes the adverse conditions of insufficient sunshine and field in the north. It mainly develops rooftop solar photovoltaics, combined with activating idle spaces or introducing ground and water-based photovoltaics in a dual-use manner. By 2021, the solar photovoltaic installation capacity of Taoyuan City will be 432.8MW, which is the highest county and city in northern Chinese Taipei.
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According to the observation of Green Energy Project Promotion Office of Taoyuan City government, energy transformation is not only the change of coal reduction, gas increase, green exhibition and non-nuclear energy structure, but also the change of energy management mode. Energy policy has also shifted from being centrally controlled to a more participatory and collaborative approach, with more power and responsibility given to local governments. In addition, after the revision of the electrical industry Law, the power generation mode has been transferred from the sole control of Taipower to distributed renewable energy, and both enterprises and citizens have the opportunity to participate.
At present, the central government supports the development of renewable energy by adopting the model of wholesale purchase of renewable energy (FIT), with a 20-year guaranteed purchase rate as an economic incentive. In this market, the business model of PV-ESCO was born. The owner or landlord rents the yard to the solar photovoltaic system provider, and the owner or landlord earns rent. Solar photovoltaics systems companies use guaranteed acquisition rates to complete cost recovery. Due to the expansion of the business model, the total capacity of solar photovoltaic devices in Chinese Taipei has reached 7.2GW by 2021.
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However, in compliance with RE100 and 2050 net zero emission and the “large consumer clause”, the demand for renewable energy power and certificates (T-REC) will increase in the future, and the wholesale purchase price of renewable energy power has been reduced year after year. The emerging business model of “non-wholesale purchase” renewable energy will become a new phenomenon. In addition, with the official launch of the Taipower Company’s Energy Trading Platform in November 2021, and coupled with demand response load management measures, energy companies have also begun to focus on investing in energy storage equipment and setting up a distributed “virtual power plant” to create an electricity sharing economy. Under this trend, therefore, Taoyuan City Office is on green project to promote thinking, combined with the above “energy generation” and “energy storage”, add the “energy saving”, whether can form “energy control” mechanism of the smart grid, to establish a new power trading business model, and get rid of both “wholesale purchase” mode of thinking, open power transformation milestone.
Project Content
(1) Cooperate with private energy providers to introduce new business models and establish demonstration virtual power plants with “energy control” mechanism
In response to RE100 and 2050 net zero emission and the “large electricity consumer clause”, the demand for renewable energy certificates and electricity transactions is expected to grow. In order to verify the emerging business model of renewable energy with “wholesale purchase”, the Green Energy Project Promotion Office of Taoyuan City Government takes the lead in the cooperation with private energy providers to establish an “energy controlled” smart grid. Fusion can ” energy generation “, “energy storage” and “energy saving”, use of renewable energy electricity spontaneous for private use, renewable energy certificate transaction and off-peak electricity price, participate in demand response and collocation load management measures or ancillary services, establish a new type electric power market. In the future, it will be extended to electricity users to create opportunities for the public and private sectors to introduce electricity services in line with the trend of electricity liberalization.
Through government subsidies, the energy industry will develop and invest in a demonstration farm to build a virtual power plant model with three major applications, namely “spontaneous self-use”, “power dispatching” and “energy monitoring”. Solar photovoltaic, energy storage equipment and energy management system will be introduced to replace the old wholesale model. To verify the commercial feasibility of full-field renewable self-use and whether the energy management system can maximize the regional renewable energy & electrical energy efficiency under the massive installation of multiple power installations and the intervention of price variables.
In the solar photovoltaic power generation end, as the use of renewable energy and certificate production; in the energy storage end, the excess solar photovoltaic electric energy is stored, and in coordination with the regulation of time electricity price and demand, the electric expense of the field is reduced, the penalty for over-contract is adjusted, and the contract capacity is adjusted, and it is used as the infrastructure for entering the Energy Trading Platform in the future. In the energy management end, the energy management system will be the main role of the overall site power dispatching, in order to ensure the regional load, balance the peak power consumption, and provide the grid to participate in the demand response load management measures and auxiliary services when the load is too high.
(2) Promote energy storage subsidies, cooperate with the private sector to promote electric power trading, and widely recruit “Amazing Teammates of Power”
At present, the energy transformation is to reduce coal, increase gas, green, non-nuclear clean energy development direction, and in line with the central government’s 2025 renewable energy promotion target, it is now committed to the promotion of renewable energy policies. However, the higher the amount of renewable energy installed, the higher the grid stability is required, similar to the concept of complementary goods, therefore, the importance of power dispatching will increase day by day.
Gradually along with the renewable energy grid, electricity pointed away from the peak pattern change, Taipower Company must continue to ensure stable power supply, at the same time is committed to the demand side management, create electricity saving incentive to restore electricity usage, look forward to joining hands with the user to reduce power consumption, improve energy efficiency and reduce power pointed away from the peak gap, so the measures to promote the demand response management, regulate the power peak load. In renewable energy continues to increase, for both energy transformation and stability and continue to meet the demand of the stable electricity, electricity required to maintain the power system, power generation and power consumption and dynamic balance of the power grid frequency, in November 2021 the formal operation of the Energy Trading Platform, jointly by power frequency adjustment of energy storage system to assist the electric power system stability, Jump out of the operation thinking of existing power plants and buying units.
Taoyuan City Government Green Energy Project Promotion Office is well aware of the importance of energy storage equipment to stabilizing the power grid, and sees that energy storage equipment will become a new phenomenon in the power market in the future. Therefore, since 2019, it has been leading Chinese Taipei in promoting energy storage subsidies and encouraging electricity users. Invest in the construction of energy storage equipment, build urban virtual power plants, strengthen the development of the electricity market, and widely recruit “Amazing Teammates of Power”
Project Results
(1) Complete 2 demonstration virtual power plants (campus and factory) with “energy control” mechanism
In order to establish the following purchasing power the PV – ESCO business model to promote wisdom energy and electricity services market innovation, the Taoyuan City Government Green Energy Project Promotion Office cooperates with private energy companies, adopts local participation, and completes the “energy control” mechanism of 2 demonstration virtual power plants, one is a public sector campus and the other is a private sector factory. It is expected that the feasibility of the new electricity transaction business model will be verified through the case study of two different electricity consumption patterns.
The first case is located in Wenxin Elementary School, Guishan District, Taoyuan City. Due to the air-conditioner policy, the demand for electricity will increase significantly in the future. The case introduced an artificial intelligent-driven energy management solution to help the school easily control the electricity consumption path and real electricity demand. And further optimize the behavior of electricity consumption, improve the efficiency of electricity use, peak electricity consumption can help the campus to reduce about 30% of the regular demand, for Chinese Taipei’s campus energy transformation, open up new possibilities. In addition to the energy management system, self-use solar photovoltaic power generation equipment (42.9kW) and energy storage equipment (15kWh) have also been built to improve the construction of the future virtual power plant.
Through six months of data obtained in solar photovoltaic spontaneous self-used results part, in addition to the flow of electricity savings, can also be through lower demand about excess fine and contractual capacity adjustment, improve the overall results, the energy storage equipment will also through the energy management system can predict the excess-of-contract condition, therefore, import solar with energy storage, can effectively reduce the highest demand, That is, it may reduce the penalty and contract capacity and save electricity. In the future, renewable energy certificates will be obtained, and the demand for each period will be continuously monitored, and the load management measures for demand response will be taken to establish a complete business model.
The second case site is located in Shung Ye Motor, Zhongli District, Taoyuan City. The case uses a large amount of electricity and is suitable for a virtual power plant as a model. It is equipped with “spontaneous self-use”, “power dispatching” and “energy monitoring” applications, which will import solar photovoltaics (454.92kW), based on spontaneous self-use, join the renewable energy voucher transaction, and then match the energy storage equipment (216kWh). And energy management system for power dispatching, the feasibility of the development of emerging business models can be evaluated. For example, it is expected to further develop a profitable business model from the perspective of relatively passive electricity saving. In addition, the field can also help solve the intermittent problem of renewable energy, reduce the hidden cost of maintaining power supply stability in the future, and achieve the win-win development vision of industry, field and Taipower. However, the site has just completed the equipment construction, and is currently obtaining electricity consumption data and calculation. In the future, the business model will continue to be completed to provide a model for the implementation of energy transformation by large consumers.
(2) Leading Chinese Taipei in promoting energy storage subsidies and activating the market participation of “Energy Trading Platform”
In order to promote the demand response management measures and auxiliary services, handle the subsidy plan for the construction of energy storage equipment, encourage consumers to adopt diversified energy management and use, and subsidize 10,000 NT dollars per kWh according to the set capacity, with a maximum subsidy of 2 million NT dollars. From 2019 to 2021, there will be a total of 18 subsidy cases and a total installed capacity of 14.14MWh. It is worth mentioning that the current Energy Trading Platform AFC qualified traders participate in a total capacity of 15MW, of which 3MW is subsidized by the Taoyuan City Government Green Energy Project Promotion Office; recently, the private qualified traders in the auxiliary service market have a total capacity of 15.1 MW for frequency modulation and backup. MW, 9MW is the subsidy project field of Taoyuan City Government Green Energy Project Promotion Office.
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In order to continue the energy transformation and promote energy, the Taoyuan City Government Green Energy Project Promotion Office will continue to apply for energy storage equipment subsidies in 2022, set up urban virtual power plants, and strengthen the development of the electricity market. In 2022, the energy storage equipment subsidy will focus on “power trading”, and the maximum subsidy amount will be increased to 5 million NT dollars. it is expected that more power users will join the ranks of “Amazing Teammates of Power”.
Promotion Potential
(1) Integrate non-wholesale renewable energy, energy storage and energy management systems, and establish a new power service business model for energy control to comply with the international energy transition and green supply chain trends
At present, many domestic companies have joined the ranks of RE100 one after another. In addition to purchasing renewable energy power and certificates, they are also important pipes to meet RE100, but most of them are sold to Taipower Companies by wholesale for a long time without certificates. In the future, our manufacturers will continue to face the need to purchase green electricity. At present, the case site of the virtual power plant city has initially established a new power transaction business model. In the future, the non-wholesale purchase type virtual power plant setting of electricity users can be used to integrate solar photovoltaic, energy storage equipment and energy management. The virtual power plant of the system will obtain more flexible power utilization, including backup power supply in emergency, certificate sales, participation in Taipower demand response management measures and auxiliary services, to obtain additional benefits and jointly assist in the stability of power supply. Participate in the green supply chain smoothly and enhance international competitiveness.
(2) In response to the launch of the Energy Trading Platform, encourage electricity users to plan and build energy storage equipment in advance, and accelerate the call for “Amazing Teammates of Power”
The Taipower’s Energy Trading Platform was officially launched in November 2021, with reference to the power market structure planning of advanced countries such as the United States, Britain and Australia, first introducing auxiliary service transactions, attracting private distributed power resources into the power grid, creating a power sharing economy through the operation of the power trading market, and looking at tens of billions of NT dollars in future business opportunities, jointly assisting the stability of the entire power system.
Now, “centralized power plants” have gradually moved toward “distributed energy”. Through the form of government incentives and subsidies, consumers are encouraged to adapt to the energy transformation trend as soon as possible and face up to the international goal of net zero emissions in 2050. In addition, through in-depth analysis of electricity transactions, the transformation of “electricity” from cost to asset can not only create another revenue line, but also contribute to the stability of electricity supply.