A nationwide blackout on Thursday last week — the first major power incident since a blackout on Aug. 15, 2017 — sparked public dissatisfaction as people were trapped in elevators, offices went dark and factories were forced to suspend operations after a malfunction at an ultra-high-voltage substation in Kaohsiung triggered four generators at the Hsinta Power Plant (興達電廠) to go offline shortly before 3pm.
On that day, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) apologized to the nation for the rolling power outages that ensued, and the following day, Taiwan Power Co (Taipower), which said that human error was to blame, proposed a plan to compensate affected households and businesses.
If a national crisis could result from a Taipower employee flipping a switch by mistake, how stable is the nation’s power grid? Is this just more evidence of poor management at the state-run utility?
Taipower said that it had predicted peak power consumption of 35 million kilowatts (kW) during the middle of this month, but power usage on the day of the incident was 36.7 million kilowatts.
At the time, some generators at the Linkou Power Plant (林口發電廠) in New Taipei City, the Mailiao Power Plant (麥寮發電廠) in Yunlin County and the Maanshan Nuclear Power Plant (馬鞍山核三廠) in Pingtung County were down for annual maintenance, Taipower said, while the water shortage had reduced hydropower generation by 800,000kW, and lower-than-expected solar and wind power output failed to provide the needed power when the Singda plant went offline.
This time, human error coincided with a worst-case scenario to trigger the rolling outages, but the incident left many puzzled, as Taipower’s operating reserve ratio — a key indicator of available power that the utility posts daily on its Web site — stood at more than 10 percent and flashed “green,” indicating ample power.
A Taipower spokesman said that the rolling outages were a grid issue, not a case of power usage exceeding supply, but why did the grid not react correctly to the shutdown at the Hsinta plant? Is Taiwan’s overall power supply sufficient? Is the nation capable of maintaining stable power during emergencies? Most importantly, is the government held accountable for its energy policy?
Minister of Economic Affairs Wang Mei-hua (王美花) has instructed Taipower to be more realistic when estimating its reserve capacity, especially during a water shortage. However, of greater importance is how to boost the national grid’s resilience during a sudden supply shock.
The government needs to step up efforts to build a smart grid, including the development of effective storage of energy from renewable sources, which could immediately be brought online when the grid needs support.
The government is determined to increase the percentage of renewables in the power mix to 20 percent by 2025, but the main renewable power sources — sunlight and wind — depend on nature, so storage facilities must be constructed that can ensure a stable power supply.
Construction of power infrastructure should prioritize system stability and regional balance. Taiwan’s grid system is designed to within seconds activate automatic protective mechanisms when something abnormal is detected, to keep the entire grid from collapsing.
While this incident demonstrated the grid’s self-protection mechanism, it also exposed the regional imbalance of power generation in Taiwan. Generating power at large, centralized plants involves risks.
Sufficient power infrastructure dispersed throughout the nation would help maintain grid stability, while reducing the harm when an unanticipated shock emerges somewhere.
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