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Taiwan
ChinaPolitics

Taiwan’s Tsai Ing-wen promises tough look at power grid after mass outage

  • Tsai says blackout was triggered ‘by operational negligence’, highlighting problems with infrastructure
  • Opposition Kuomintang calls for Economy Minister Wang Mei-hua to step down

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Taiwan has blamed negligence during annual maintenance at a major power plant for allowing the power to go out for more than 5 million households on Thursday. Photo: CNA
Reuters
Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen on Friday vowed to scrutinise power infrastructure and improve the grid’s reliability after a mass outage left one-third of the island without electricity.
Taiwan blamed negligence during annual maintenance at a major power plant for the outage across the island on Thursday that caused the lights to go off for more than 5 million households, although the island’s crucial semiconductor sector was largely unaffected.

“The national security team has been conducting examinations on the resilience of key infrastructure, and yesterday’s incident is one of the cases that needed to be scrutinised closely,” Tsai said.

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Tsai said supply was sufficient at the time of the incident and the mass outage was triggered “simply by operational negligence … which highlighted problems in the country’s power grid and the resilience of its key infrastructure”.

“We must do a complete power infrastructure check-up and accelerate works on systematic improvement,” said Tsai, who is set to visit the coal-fired station in the southern city of Kaohsiung at noon.

Power was restored but the outage has renewed criticism of Tsai’s electricity policy, with the main opposition party, the Kuomintang (KMT), calling for Economy Minister Wang Mei-hua to step down.

Taiwan experienced two major outages in May, when the island was grappling with a drought and heatwave, triggered by a spike in demand and insufficient supply.
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