林口

Linkou Power Plant is located on the coast of Linkou District, New Taipei City, and is a major coal-fired plant serving northern Taiwan's grid. Its units were rebuilt under an ultra-supercritical upgrade program to improve efficiency and reduce emissions.

Linkou's rebuild followed a build-first, demolish-later approach: two new 800MW ultra-supercritical units were completed in 2016 and 2017 to replace the old 600MW units, with a third identical unit finished in 2019, bringing total capacity to 2,400MW. The new units are about 7% more efficient than the old ones, cutting coal use by roughly 500,000 tonnes and carbon emissions by over a million tonnes each year.

林口 (Coal) currently reports a net generation of 2,275.3 MW across 3 unit(s), against an installed capacity of 2,400 MW (94.8% utilization).

Coal units are large thermal steam plants that take hours to start up and ramp slowly, making them best suited for steady baseload operation rather than flexible dispatch. Coal itself can be stockpiled for months, giving very stable fuel supply, but per-unit CO2 and air-pollutant emissions (SOx, NOx, particulates) are higher than gas.

Coal was historically Taiwan's largest source of baseload capacity, and the Taichung Power Plant was once among the largest coal-fired plants in the world by capacity. Air-pollution and decarbonization policy has since pushed toward reducing coal's share in favor of gas and renewables, with older units being retired or converted. Until new LNG terminal capacity comes fully online, coal remains an important baseload backstop.