About 5.49 million households yesterday lost power in one of the nation’s largest power disruptions since 2017 due to a switch malfunction at Kaohsiung’s Hsinta Power Plant (興達電廠), the Ministry of Economic Affairs said.
The incident sent the power plant offline, leading to a circuit malfunction at the Longqi Extra High Voltage Substation (龍崎超高壓變電所), which caused several power plants in the south to shut down.
About 10.5 million kilowatts was lost during the incident, Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) said.
Photo: Lee Hui-chou, Taipei Times
The Hsinta plant accounts for about 6 percent of the nation’s electricity production.
Taipower activated hydroelectric, liquefied natural gas and coal-fired power plants to fill the supply gap, it said.
Minister of Economic Affairs Wang Mei-hua (王美花) last night requested reprimands for the massive blackouts, as Taipower chairman Yang Wei-fuu (楊偉甫) and president Chung Bin-li (鍾炳利) offered their resignations, which are subject to the Cabinet’s approval.
Photo: CNA
Major science parks reported only minor effects from the blackouts. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電), the world’s biggest contract chipmaker, said the incident had no significant impact on its production lines.
United Microelectronics Corp (聯電), the world’s No. 3 contract chipmaker, said the incident had brought production to a halt at its plant in the Tainan section of the Southern Taiwan Science Park (南部科學園區), but it was manageable.
LCD panel maker AU Optronics Corp (友達光電) said that some of its manufacturing facilities experienced a sudden voltage drop, but operations remained normal, while Innolux Corp (群創) said power went off at one of its plants, but that operations were recovering and it is evaluating the impact.
Power at the Kaohsiung section of the Southern Taiwan Science Park was fully restored by noon, the park’s administration said.
The ministry said that 48 industrial parks were affected by the blackout, and power had been restored to 36 of them as of yesterday afternoon.
Liu Chi-chuan (劉繼傳), operations management deputy director at the ministry’s Export Processing Zone Administration, said that 521 companies in industrial parks in the south were affected by the blackout, and power had been restored to 358 of them as of 1pm yesterday.
Executive Yuan spokesman Lo Ping-cheng (羅秉成) said that the government had asked the ministry and Taipower to thoroughly investigate the cause of the outage.
The government would reprimand those responsible if the large-scale blackout was proven to have been caused by human error, Lo quoted Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) as saying.
Wang said that human error was to blame for the blackout and that the ministry would complete its investigation in three days.
Additional reporting by CNA
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