Taiwan Smart Grid Plans Detailed at Darnell’s DC Building Power Asia 2011
The third-annual DC Building Power Asia conference was opened by Dr. Faa-Jeng Lin, Chair of the National Energy Project – Smart Grid and AMI Division, National Science Council, and Chair Professor, Dept. E. E. National Central University, who presented a detailed description of the master plan for the implementation of smart grid technologies in Taiwan by 2030.
Among the topics presented by Dr. Lin were ’cellular smart grids’, smart home energy systems and the use of advanced distribution automation technologies to enable the absorption of high levels of distributed generation resources. This is a critical goal, due to the need to replace today’s nuclear power stations with renewable energy within 20 to 30 years. Renewable energy sources (primarily off-shore wind and PV) are expected to rise from 1% of capacity today to 15% by 2020, reaching 30% by 2030.
Dr. Lin described the concept of a "Multi-Microgrid." This unique concept calls for a series of arbitrary microgrid elements that could be integrated or separated like building blocks to modify the size and structure of the microgrid in real time in response to changing conditions in renewable energy resources and energy demand. This concept is expected to support the development of Cellular Smart Grids.
Equipment being developed for use with smart home energy systems includes intelligent home appliances, chargers for electric vehicles, power management chips, energy management system, home gateway, human-machine interface control, load type of control interface, wireless sensors, wired sensors, and communications module.
Taiwan expects to use advanced distribution automation and microgrid technologies to enhance the total installed capacity of renewables. In addition, the goal is to promote smart home (building) energy management technology to increase 20% energy usage efficiency in 2015 compared to 2005. And to implement the developed key technologies of smart grid and AMI, the install capacity of distributed generations will be 17.8GW and create 120 billion NT value (about $40 billion) and more than 20,000 jobs per year from 2010 to 2025.
Taiwan has established substantial local expertise in the development and implementation of smart grid technologies by tying in closely with the smart grid development schedule of Taiwan Power Company, integrating the research abilities of industry and academia to establish smart grid and government support of the power facilities industry in Taiwan.
The government has committed to promote AMI, microgrid, smart home (building) energy management system, advanced distribution automation pilot projects by National Science Council to develop key technologies of smart grid and AMI and ensure that the merging of the developed technologies into the power system in Taiwan will be reliable and feasible.
More news and information regarding the latest developments in Smart Grid electronics can be found at Darnell’s SmartGridElectronics.Net.
