Branding the government’s energy policy as “problematic,” the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) yesterday demanded the resignation of Minister of Economic Affairs Wang Mei-hua (王美花) to take responsibility for wide-ranging power outages on Thursday.
The outages affected 8.46 million customers, Taiwan Power Co said, adding that a short-term rolling blackout was initiated across the country as an emergency measure after four generators tripped at the Singda Power Plant in Kaohsiung.
As the power plant’s operating reserves were at about 10 percent at the time, the nation should have had enough power on Thursday even if the plant’s generators were idle, KMT Culture and Communications Committee deputy director-general Huang Tzu-che (黃子哲) said.
Photo: Fang Pin-chao, Taipei Times
Instead, the power plant, which provides only 3.8 percent of the nation’s power, caused a rolling blackout across the nation, he said.
President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) or Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) must clarify what happened, he added.
The Tsai administration has set a goal turning Taiwan into a “nuclear-free homeland” by 2025, but coal-fired power still accounted for 45.02 percent of total power supply last year, only 0.36 percent lower compared with the administration of former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) from 2008 to 2016, while green energy increased by only 1.4 percent, Huang said.
Thermal power, which reached 80.64 percent during Ma’s administration, increased to 82.24 percent last year, Huang said, adding that the numbers indicate the country is suffering from insufficient power generation.
Citing a power outage on Aug. 15, 2017, Cheng Chao-hsin (鄭照新), another committee deputy director-general, said the Tsai administration at the time had also claimed that it was not a problem with power generation, but the distribution network.
Four years later, the distribution network has not been improved, and there is no reason for Wang to remain in office when then-minister of economic affairs Lee Chih-kung (李世光) had to resign over a similar incident in 2017, Cheng said.
KMT Institute of Revolutionary Practice director Lo Chih-chiang (羅致強) said that the discrepancy in information provided by the Presidential Office and Wang’s own statement showed that the two agencies did not have time to plan a united response, while underscoring that Taiwan is short on power generation.
He was referring to a statement by the Presidential Office on Thursday that the blackout was caused by an electrical grid malfunction, while Wang attributed the cause to actual power usage coming close to 36.7 million kilowatts, topping the peak estimates of power usage in May, at 35 million kilowatts, by 1.7 million kilowatts, and that photovoltaic power generation was down by 300,000 kilowatts, wind power generation down by 250,000 kilowatts, and several power generator units were powered down for annual maintenance.
KMT Culture and Communications Committee director-general Alicia Wang (王育敏) said that someone in the Tsai administration should step down for the five-hour rolling blackout.
The Democratic Progressive Party government’s goal to achieve 20 percent renewable energy by 2025 is impossible, as renewable energy sources cannot offer stable power generation, she said, calling on the Tsai administration to consult and respect experts’ opinions on the matter to devise the safest and most efficient power generation system for the country.
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