Taiwan Power Company

The Taiwan Power Company, also known by the short name Taipower , is a state-owned electric power industry providing electricity to Taiwan and its off-shore islands.

History
Taipower was established on 1 May 1946. Its origins can be traced to 1919 when Taiwan Electric Power Co. was founded during Japanese colonial rule. In the subsequent decades, the Sun Moon Lake hydropower project was completed, and the company built a transmission line that connected northern Taiwan with the south.

In 1994, a measure which allowed independent power producers (IPP's) to provide up to 20 percent of Taiwan's electricity should have ended the monopoly. On 1 October 2012, Taipower allied with Taiwan Water Corporation to provide cross-agency integrated services called Water and Power Associated Service that accepts summary transactions between the two utilities. On 11 October 2012, the Economics Committee of the Legislative Yuan cut Taipower's budget for power purchases from IPP.

In July 2015, the Executive Yuan approved the amendments to the Electricity Act which were proposed by the Ministry of Economic Affairs, which will divide Taipower into two separate business groups in the next five to nine years: a power generation company and a power grid company. The measures were taken to improve efficiency within the company and to encourage positive competition within the industry.

On 20 October 2016, the Executive Yuan passed an amendments to the Electricity Act according to which Taipower will be divided into subsidiary companies in 6–9 years.

Operations
Taipower operates both of Taiwan's active nuclear power plants. It also operates coal power plants, but these are planned to be shut down in favor of natural gas turbines.

The company is expecting its first deliveries of liquefied natural gas (LNG) in 2023 as Taipower is moving away from coal for power generation.

The Taipower headquarters is housed in a 27-story building located in Zhongzheng District, Taipei. Completed in 1983, it was then the tallest building in Taiwan and the first building to surpass the 100 meter height.

Financials
As of 2019, Taipower is the only Taiwanese state-owned company that is unprofitable, reporting a loss of NT$29.7 billion (US$955 million) during the first six months of 2019, a minus of NT$5.7 billion compared to the same period of 2018. The company attributed this on rising fuel prices and various anti-pollution measures which increased the costs of energy production.

Baseball team
The Taiwan Power Company baseball team, also known as the Taipower baseball team (台電棒球隊), is one of the two amateur baseball teams in Taiwan's First Division amateur baseball league that are owned by a government sponsored corporation. Both founded in 1948, the team and Taiwan Cooperative Bank have a long tradition of being the two dominant baseball teams in Taiwan's baseball history. At one point, they were known as TCB of the North, Taipower of the South (北合庫，南台電). Although many of its most prominent players left for professional career after the founding of the Chinese Professional Baseball League (CPBL) and struggled to keep its players on the team, it is still considered one of the best teams in the amateur or semi-professional leagues. It also has been training some of the best Taiwanese baseball players, and many of them are still valuable players on their current teams.

In 1945, a group of TPC employees who were enthusiastic of baseball formed the Kaohsiung Power Baseball Team, which would later form the core of Taipower Baseball Team. After many years of development and recruiting many promising players, the team rose to prominence in the amateur league, and was renamed Taipower Baseball Team since its roster included not only players from Kaohsiung, but also other parts of Taiwan. It has since been in virtually every amateur seasons and tournaments, and has won many of them. As of 2023, the team is part of the semi-professional Popcorn League established in 2014.

Organizational structure

 * Taiwan Power Research Institute
 * Committees
 * Department of Nuclear and Fossil Power Projects
 * Legal Affairs Office
 * New Business Development Office
 * Department of Civil Service Ethics
 * Department of Human Resources
 * Department of Accounting
 * Department of Industrial Safety
 * Department of Public Relations
 * Department of Environmental Protection
 * Department of Information Management
 * Department of Construction
 * Department of Power Development
 * Department of Finance
 * Department of Materials
 * Department of Fuels
 * Department of System Operations
 * Department of Corporate Planning
 * Secretariat
 * Distribution and Service Division
 * Transmission System Division
 * Nuclear Power Division
 * Power Generation Division