Two cities in Taiwan were honored by the 2017 APEC Energy Smart Communities Initiative (ESCI) Best Practices at an award ceremony in Singapore: Tainan – a city on Taiwan’s southwest coast – received two awards in the low carbon models town and smart transport categories, and Penghu won in the smart grid category.
Under the initiative called “Solar Powered City — Tainan Reaches for the Sun,” Tainan created a low carbon model town, approving 3,621 applications to install solar power equipment, and installing 245MW of capacity that generates 300 million kilowatt hours of electricity annually. According to city officials, that solar power capacity has resulted in a reduction of 1.67 million metric tons of carbon. By 2018, it is anticipated that combined production total of all rooftop PV systems will be 440 MW.
In the Smart Transport category, the Smart Park ICT Re-engineering Initiative aims to reduce carbon emissions produced by private vehicles in the car parks, which host more than 800 businesses employing 270,000 employees. Through a combination of smart traffic control, parking and digital signage, as well as e-shuttle buses and a transportation app, the parks have slashed carbon emissions by 960 tons and saved 119,100 liters of fuel.
The Penghu Dongjiyu Microgrid Small Power Supply System took silver in the smart grid category. Centered on Dongji islet in outlying Penghu County, the system’s objectives include increasing renewable energy use, reducing diesel power generation, enhancing the stability of electricity supply and providing low-carbon power supply. It includes the use of electricity generation forecasting, remote monitoring for load predictions and a control system for three-phase equilibrium of AC power.
The awards program is a key component of the 2011-launched ESCI Knowledge Sharing Platform, a tool for collecting and sharing best practices for creating energy smart communities.
The Energy Smart Communities Initiative (ESCI) was launched in November 2010 by the U.S. President Barack Obama and Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan within the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC). ESCI covers four main pillars—smart transport, smart buildings, smart grid, and smart jobs and consumers — along with the cross-cutting examples of low carbon model towns.
