Taipei, Sept. 22 (CNA) With the current summer time electricity tariff scheme to end soon, households in Taiwan are expected to save about NT$58 (US$1.89) per month on average in their power bills from Oct. 1, Taiwan Power Co. (Taipower) said Saturday.
After the scheme, which raises electricity rates in the summer to prevent overuse and a shortage of power, Taipower spokesman Hsu Tsao-hua (徐造華) said, the average power rate will fall to NT$2.6253 per kilowatt hours for households in Taiwan.
So a household whose power consumption hits 330 kilowatt hours a month will see its monthly bill fall to NT$637 starting from October, down from the current NT$695, Hsu said.
Since 1989, Taiwan has adopted this tariff scheme, which starts from June and ends in September, to encourage the public to conserve power during the hottest season of the year when energy usage tends to be high.
Taipower, the state-owned sole electricity supplier in Taiwan, said the current summer time power rate scheme, which bills consumers based on progressive rates, has raised bills for households by as much as 27 percent.
According to Taipower, electricity consumption during the summer in Taiwan tends to go up by about 40 percent compared with the non-summer months.
As a result, Taipower said, a household which uses about 420 kilowatt hours of electricity a month will have to pay around NT$440 more in its bill, which includes about NT$115 due to the summer time electricity tariff scheme, with the remaining additional cost arising from their higher power consumption.
With temperatures expected to fall after the summer, Hsu said, Taiwan will soon leave the peak power consumption season behind.
Hsu said Taipower has forecast that its operating reserve margin -- the percentage of generating capacity available to the power grid that can be called upon within a short period of time -- will stay above 6 percent from October to late November.
Hsu said the forecast showed power supply will become stable.
When the operating reserves margin falls between 6 percent and 10 percent, that indicates the power supply is tight, according to Taipower.
(By Tsai Peng-ming and Frances Huang)
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