History of Taiwan Power Development

In the early years, hydro power played an important role in Taiwan power supply system. During 1960s, with the rapid growth of the country's economy, Taipower company then focused its power development on oil-fired plants to satisfy the increasing demand of electricity. However, influenced by the impact of second oil crisis in 1970s, coal-fired power started to substitute for oil-fired power and served as the most important source of the thermal power plants. Thereafter, pumped storage and nuclear power plants also joined the electricity generation system at that time. Furthermore, since 1990, owing to the government's new policy, gas-fired power plants has been actively promoted and became a new electricity generation option.

However, with the rising consciousness of environmental protection, Taipower began to encounter many difficulties in power plant construction, causing the system reserve margins to decline to unacceptable low levels. In order to solve the problem, government allowed independent power producers to join the electricity market in 1995; therefore, the first independent power plant, Mai-liao power plant, was established in 1999. Besides, considering of the fact that reducing the peak load is another way to solve part of the power supply problem, Taipower company also embarked on the demand-side management in 1979.

Nowadays, in order to diversify the resources of electricity generation, Taipower supplies electricity from nuclear, pumped storage, coal, oil, gas, renewable energy , etc.