Home
Taipei, Dec. 29 (CNA) Drilling of a geothermal exploration well began Thursday on Green Island, with a plan to install a 200-kilowatt geothermal generator by the end of 2019 that will generate over 1 million kilowatt hours of energy annually.
Taiwan Power Co. (Taipower) Section Chief Chen Yi-cheng (陳一成), who has been promoting the company's geothermal energy project, mapped out the timeline for the Green Island project during a recent interview.
According to Chen, the drilling and assessment of the exploration well will be completed by next August, which will ascertain whether the well is viable.
At that point, Taipower will begin setting up ground-level geothermal generators, which should be completed by the end of 2019.
Taipower further noted that while the operational cost of generating one kilowatt hour of electricity by geothermal generators is NT$6 (US$0.202), the cost through diesel generators is more than twice as much -- at NT$14.
Therefore, the company will save around NT$8 million in operational costs each year with an annual capacity of generating 1 million kilowatt hours from the geothermal generators.
The state-owned corporation signed an agreement with the Industrial Technology Research Institute in 2015 to introduce organic Rankine cycle technology to Green Island, with the aim of building geothermal power plants able to generate 2,000 to 4,000 kilowatts of energy.
