Taiwan’s new government, which is led by President Tsai, aims to cumulatively install 20GW of PV capacity by 2025. Bureau of Energy (BOE), under Ministry of Economic Affairs, announced the “Two-year PV Accelerating Program,” (the “Program”) targeting at adding 1.44GW of solar projects in Taiwan by June 2018.

Dr. Chuan-Neng Lin, Director General of BOE, said that the Bureau will support installing a total of 1.44GW of solar systems, including 530MW of ground-mounting systems and 910MW of rooftop PV systems, in Taiwan from July 2016 to June 2018. The Program was officially released on July 28 at a public hearing hosted in Legislative Yuan.

The Program requires buildings owned by government agencies and industrial factories as well as buildings in scientific parks to cover a certain proportion of their rooftops by solar systems. Ministry of Economic Affairs has started checking available rooftops owned by government agencies and will start installing solar system as  promotion and demonstration.

Land checking is also being undergone Taiwan-wide. BOE has secured three unused lands that were once for salt industry, and each can be used for install up to 10MW of solar panels. These three lands are near to urban areas so that they are accessible for the power grid. BOE plans to hold a solar project tender for the lands  in this August to the soonest.

BOE is also planning to rewrite some entries in Renewable Energy Development Act to lessen restrictions on development of PV projects in Taiwan. Furthermore, the government initially plans to undergo construction of the grid infrastructure from now to 2018, and later starts scaling up solar constructions between 2020 and 2025 to meet the installation target.