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
‘TAIWAN-FRIENDLY’: The last time the Web site fact sheet removed the lines on the US not supporting Taiwanese independence was during the Biden administration in 2022 The US Department of State has removed a statement on its Web site that it does not support Taiwanese independence, among changes that the Taiwanese government praised yesterday as supporting Taiwan. The Taiwan-US relations fact sheet, produced by the department’s Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, previously stated that the US opposes “any unilateral changes to the status quo from either side; we do not support Taiwan independence; and we expect cross-strait differences to be resolved by peaceful means.” In the updated version published on Thursday, the line stating that the US does not support Taiwanese independence had been removed. The updated
‘CORRECT IDENTIFICATION’: Beginning in May, Taiwanese married to Japanese can register their home country as Taiwan in their spouse’s family record, ‘Nikkei Asia’ said The government yesterday thanked Japan for revising rules that would allow Taiwanese nationals married to Japanese citizens to list their home country as “Taiwan” in the official family record database. At present, Taiwanese have to select “China.” Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said the new rule, set to be implemented in May, would now “correctly” identify Taiwanese in Japan and help protect their rights, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement. The statement was released after Nikkei Asia reported the new policy earlier yesterday. The name and nationality of a non-Japanese person marrying a Japanese national is added to the
AT RISK: The council reiterated that people should seriously consider the necessity of visiting China, after Beijing passed 22 guidelines to punish ‘die-hard’ separatists The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) has since Jan. 1 last year received 65 petitions regarding Taiwanese who were interrogated or detained in China, MAC Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday. Fifty-two either went missing or had their personal freedoms restricted, with some put in criminal detention, while 13 were interrogated and temporarily detained, he said in a radio interview. On June 21 last year, China announced 22 guidelines to punish “die-hard Taiwanese independence separatists,” allowing Chinese courts to try people in absentia. The guidelines are uncivilized and inhumane, allowing Beijing to seize assets and issue the death penalty, with no regard for potential
‘UNITED FRONT’ FRONTS: Barring contact with Huaqiao and Jinan universities is needed to stop China targeting Taiwanese students, the education minister said Taiwan has blacklisted two Chinese universities from conducting academic exchange programs in the nation after reports that the institutes are arms of Beijing’s United Front Work Department, Minister of Education Cheng Ying-yao (鄭英耀) said in an exclusive interview with the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper) published yesterday. China’s Huaqiao University in Xiamen and Quanzhou, as well as Jinan University in Guangzhou, which have 600 and 1,500 Taiwanese on their rolls respectively, are under direct control of the Chinese government’s political warfare branch, Cheng said, citing reports by national security officials. A comprehensive ban on Taiwanese institutions collaborating or
RSS