Redundancy is the key

Microchip manufacturers based in the Hsinchu Science-based Industrial Park are no longer complaining about Taipower, now that Vice President Lien Chan (連戰) has come down in favor of giving the park its own separate power station.

But whereas the park's future seems secure, the rest of northern Taiwan has to face continued power disruptions stemming from failures of the main north-south transmission lines. The results could be potentially disastrous.

"We're very satisfied with Taipower," said Hander Chang (張致遠), an assistant vice president at Winbond Electronics (華邦電子), one of the biggest manufacturers in the park. "The private power station is going to be built in accordance with the government's wishes."

Chang's response is a far cry from his attitude the morning after the quake, when he told the Taipei Times that the lack of power was "kind of a nightmare."

At the time, chip makers based in the park criticized Taipower not only for the blackout, but for the fact that the company could give little indication of when it would be able to restore power.

In the end, it took a special government directive to make restoration of power to the park a priority, such that the park -- and its vital export production, amounting to some US$10 billion per year -- took precedence over domestic users in the capital.

But while the Hsinchu chip fabricators will be satisfied if the plant is completed on schedule in two years time, everyone else in the north of the island has to come to terms with the fact that they could lose power at any moment.

The problem is compounded by the fact that a disruption of power transmission from the south of the island will cause the two nuclear plants in the north to trip off-line, when they sense they can no longer meet the power needs of the north alone.

The problem lies with Taipower's distribution network, which relies on two main north-south trunk lines to bring power from the south, where most of the power stations are located, to the north, where the majority of power is consumed.

"It's a problem of distribution," said Ken Mark, head of a team of American structural engineers from EQE International who were in Taiwan to investigate damage caused by the quake.

"All the power was funneled through one substation," he said. The substation at Chungliao was located close to the epicenter of the 921 quake, and despite what Mark thought were fairly adequate design standards, the unit was nonetheless badly damaged by the huge tremor.

"The transmission system needs more redundancy," said Mark, by which he meant that there has to be some other way of transferring power from south to north, such as a third trunk line, in cases when one of the main power lines fail.

That the problem was not due to the severity of the quake was highlighted by a similar power outage in the northern half of the island in late July, caused when one of the towers on one of the the north-south trunk transmission routes collapsed during a landslide.

A recurrence of the power outage could happen at any time in the next few weeks, EQE warns, in a report on its Web site.

One of the main problems is the poor design and siting of the towers, according to Chern Jenn-chuan (陳振川), head of the Taiwan Construction Research Institute (台灣營建研究院) and chairman of National Taiwan University's civil engineering department.