Severe flooding from torrential rains and strong winds brought by Typhoon Nari yesterday knocked out power to around 1.39 million homes in northern Taiwan, with Keelung and Greater Taipei taking the brunt of the outages.
At the peak of the outage a total of 901,000 homes in the Taipei metropolitan area lost power while 331,500 homes in Keelung went without electricity for part of the day, according to the Taiwan Power Company (Taipower).
Around 116,000 homes across Hsinchu, Miaoli, Taoyuan and Ilan also lost power, but electricity had been restored to most of those areas by late yesterday, according to Taipower executives.
As of 9:30pm power had been restored to a total of 700,000 homes in northern Taiwan, leaving around 690,000 users without power, said executives.
High winds toppled power lines and rains flooded substation facilities in the north causing the extensive blackouts, said Taipower.
Key primary high-voltage substations -- which are the main distributors of power into the local grids -- in Hsichih, Nankang and Patu were knocked out by flash floods up to 3.7m deep, according to Taipower.
By knocking out these three main units, power supply to more than 30 secondary substations in the area was cut, greatly increasing the number of affected end users, said executives who were unwilling to estimate when power would be restored to all users.
"The flooding was severe this time and the weather remains uncertain," said an executive.
"First we have to pump out the water from the substations, then use fresh water to clean the facilities and then we can replace damaged equipment. So, it's impossible to estimate when all power will be restored," he added.
In Taipei, over 2,700 office buildings saw severe flooding in their basements, where the main circuit boards for their power supply are located, said an executive.
"Pumping out these basements and repairing the damaged equipment, is not a simple or quick task," said Taipower.
Teams of clean-up crews were contracted by the Taipei City Government to pump basement car parks in the Nanking East Road-Sungjiang Road district last night. These teams were laying thick hoses through which they would suck out flood waters with noisy gasoline-powered pumps.
"We charge in the tens of thousands of dollars to pump a basement like this," said the chief of one crew, pointing to the flooded ramp of an underground car park.
Meanwhile, output at Taipower's First Nuclear Power Plant in Taipei County was initially reduced according to operating procedures during severe storms, said an executive.
But as the storm moved on later in the afternoon and rain lessened, output from the plant's two reactors was gradually being increased, according to executives.
The single functioning reactor at Taipower's Second Nuclear Power Plant -- also in Taipei County -- was brought off-line completely as flooded substations and downed power lines cut off their delivery channels, a company executive said.
Operations at the Third Nuclear Power Plant, which overlooks Kenting National Park's most popular beach, remained unaffected, said executives.
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