The Kaohsiung City Government on Wednesday granted state-run Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) conditional approval to restart the new Unit 1 generator at the Hsinta Power Plant (興達電廠), which was shut down along with another unit after a fire earlier this month, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday.
The new unit at the plant in Kaohsiung’s Yongan District (永安) would only be reactivated on the condition that its coal-fired backup generators can be shut down, Minister of Economic Affairs Kung Ming-hsin (龔明鑫) told reporters.
Taipower suspended operations of the unit until an inspection could be carried out after a blaze during trial operations, the utility said earlier this month.
Photo: CNA
A leak of natural gas from the new Unit 2 is suspected to have caused the fire.
Unit 1 is being inspected and would resume operations after passing safety checks, Taipower vice president Tsai Chih-meng (蔡志孟) told the Taipei Times by telephone yesterday.
As two units at the coal-fired Linkou Power Plant (林口電廠) were shut down due to a cracked pipe and a malfunction last week, Taipower has activated coal-fired backup generators to keep its reserve margin within an acceptable range, Tsai said.
The suspension of operations of the three generators cut power supply by 2.9 gigawatts, he said.
Backup generators at Hsinta include the coal-fired units 3 and 4, which are used during power shortages.
The two backup generators are only allowed to operate for up to 720 hours per year, he said.
Unit 1 at the Linkou plant resumed operations on Tuesday, adding 0.8 gigawatts to the grid, he said.
When Hsinta’s Unit 1 starts up, it is expected to generate 1.2 gigawatts to 1.3 gigawatts, Tsai said.
Full restoration of the units would bring the nighttime reserve margin to better than the 6-to-7 percent warning level, after it was as low as 4 percent last week, he said.
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