The Mailiao Power Plant () is a

coal-fired power plant A coal-fired power station or coal power plant is a thermal power station which burns coal to generate electricity. Worldwide, there are about 8,500 coal-fired power stations totaling over 2,000 gigawatts capacity. They generate about a th ...

in Formosa Mai-Liao Industrial Park, Mailiao Township,

Yunlin County Yunlin County (Mandarin pinyin: ''Yúnlín Xiàn''; Taigi POJ: ''Hûn-lîm-koān''; Hakka PFS: ''Yùn-lìm-yen'') is a county in western Taiwan. Yunlin County borders the Taiwan Strait to the west, Nantou County to the east, Changhua County t ...

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...

. With a total installed capacity of 4,200 MW, the plant is Taiwan's third largest coal-fired power plant after

Taichung Power Plant The Taichung Power Plant () is a coal, coal-fired power plant in Longjing District, Longjing, Taichung, Taiwan (ROC). With an installed coal-fired generation capacity of 5,500 Megawatt, MW, it is List of largest power stations in the world#Coal, ...

and Hsinta Power Plant.

History

The groundbreaking ceremony for the power plant construction was held on 12 December 1996. Invited to the ceremony were Vice Premier Hsu Li-teh, Minister of Economic Affairs

Wang Chih-kang Wang Chih-kang (; born 7 September 1942) is a Taiwanese Mainlander politician. Wang holds a doctorate from Texas A&M University. Wang was the first chairman of the Fair Trade Commission between 1992 and 1996. He then served as Ministry of ...

and

President President most commonly refers to: *President (corporate title) *President (education), a leader of a college or university *President (government title) President may also refer to: Automobiles * Nissan President, a 1966–2010 Japanese ful ...

Legislative Yuan The Legislative Yuan is the unicameral legislature of the Republic of China (Taiwan) located in Taipei. The Legislative Yuan is composed of 113 members, who are directly elected for 4-year terms by people of the Taiwan Area through a parallel v ...

Liu Sung-pan Liu Sung-pan (; 3 December 1931 — 18 November 2016) was a Taiwanese politician. He served as the President of the Legislative Yuan from 1992 to 1999. He was the Legislative Yuan's first Taiwan-born speaker and presided over a legislature enti ...

. Commissioned in June 1999 for its first two units, the power plant is the first independent power producer power plant after

Taipower The Taiwan Power Company (, Taipower; ) is a state-owned electric power industry providing electricity to Taiwan and off-shore islands of the Republic of China. History Taipower was established on 1 May 1946. Its origins can be traced to 1919 ...

ended the electricity supply monopoly in Taiwan in 1994.

Architecture

The power plant is located on a 87 hectares of area made of

reclaimed land Land reclamation, usually known as reclamation, and also known as land fill (not to be confused with a waste landfill), is the process of creating new Terrestrial ecoregion, land from oceans, list of seas, seas, Stream bed, riverbeds or lak ...

Ownership

The power plant is owned by the Mai-Liao Power Corporation (MPC) and Formosa Petrochemical Corporation (FPCC).

Generation units

The power plant consists of five 600 MW pulverized coal-fired units owned by the MPC and two 600 MW pulverized coal-fired co-generation units owned by the FPCC. The plant is designed for base load service with the capability for daily startup and shutdown operation per instructions from

's dispatcher center.

Components

The coal handling system of the power plant has a truck unloading station capacity of 600 tonnes/hour and its flexible sidewall conveyor capacity of 800 tonnes/hour. It gets its coal directly from

cargo ship A cargo ship or freighter is a merchant ship that carries cargo, goods, and materials from one port to another. Thousands of cargo carriers ply the world's seas and oceans each year, handling the bulk of international trade. Cargo ships are usu ...

s docking at its Mai-Liao Industrial Port, next to the power plant. The coal is stored in coal domes in which each dome is 120 meter in diameter, 60 meter in height and 180,000 tons in capacity. The cooling system for the plant comes directly from the sea water with a total usage amount of 200,000 tons per day.

Events

2012

On 20 June 2012 at 11:55 am, the power plant tripped during the Tropical Storm Talim. This caused the shut down of 54 out of 66 units of the Yunlin petrochemical complex.

2016

On 1 August 2016, a generating unit of the power plant broke down, disrupting the supply of power.

2017

On 7 October 2017, the no. 1 generation unit of the power plant was shut down due to pipe rupture, causing 600 MW of power loss.

References

{{Power plants of Taiwan 1999 establishments in Taiwan Buildings and structures in Yunlin County Coal-fired power stations in Taiwan Energy infrastructure completed in 1999