FIRST OCEAN CURRENT POWER GENERATION FOR TAIWAN|中山大學獨步全球 研究黑潮發電七年有成

In southern Taiwan, scientists conducted the world's first successful experiment to use the oceanic current to generate energy, moving one step closer to Taiwan's goal of a 'nuclear-power-free homeland'. A generator was towed out into the ocean off Pingtung County in southern Taiwan. Its 20 blades were dropped into the sea from a platform where they were able to capture energy from the Kuroshio Current. The generator was the first of its kind and the culmination of a 7-year experiment by Professor Chen Yang-yih. ==CHEN YANG-YIH, Senior Vice President of National Sun Yat-sen University== No experiment made over any oceanic current has been successful in the world until now. But we have been successful. We were able to produce 26.31 kilowatts of power with 1.27 meters per second of ocean current. Chen believes the generator produces 50 kilowatts of electricity at maximum capacity. In the winter months when the speed of the current falls to 0.45 meters per second, it generates electricity for 60 hours straight. ==CHEN YANG-YIH, Senior Vice President of National Sun Yat-sen University== Of course, our goal is to replace nuclear energy. We aim to increasingly provide energy to Taiwan's users and the ideal is to have a zero-nuke homeland. Taiwan's east coast is the ideal place to produce electricity with the Kuroshio. Chen's team plans to move to Jioupeng Bay in Pingtung next year, to test whether the system can produce 2 megawatts of electricity for commercial operations. He hopes to build a power grid which is able to produce 1 gigawatt of electricity with the same capacity as a nuclear power plant. Nuclear energy currently amounts more than 16% of the total energy that Taiwan consumes. TRANSLATED BY：SASHA CHIU