The Control Yuan on Wednesday censured state-run Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) for mass blackouts that occurred across the nation for two days in May 2021 and on March 3 last year, which were caused by human error and grid failure at a power plant in Kaohsiung.
Eight officials were impeached and the cases are to be forwarded to the Judicial Yuan’s Disciplinary Court for adjudication, a statement issued by Tsai Chung-yi (蔡崇義) and two other Control Yuan members said.
The first power outage, on May 13, 2021, occurred when a contract worker from Taipower Kaoping Power Supply Branch made an error while conducting tests related to the expansion of an ultra-high-voltage substation in Kaohsiung’s Lujhu District (路竹), which led to a voltage drop that forced the Hsinta Power Plant in the city’s Yongan District (永安) to shut down, the statement said.
Photo: Lin Ching-hua, Taipei Times
As a result, Taipower was forced to implement six rounds of rolling power cuts over five hours that affected about 4.15 million households, the Control Yuan said.
A motion had been passed to impeach four former Taipower executives deemed responsible for the blackouts, including Wu Cing-mu (吳清木), then-head of Taipower Kaoping Power Supply Branch, for negligence, it said.
That instance of human negligence cost Taipower about NT$470 million (US$15 million) in compensation to the affected households and businesses, which took the form of discounted electricity bills, the Control Yuan said.
Four days later, on May 17, the malfunction of a generator at the Hsinta Power Plant occurred at about midday, causing another outage, and Taipower again implemented rolling blackouts that affected about 1 million households, it said.
Following its review, the Control Yuan censured Taipower and said it had determined that the blackouts were unnecessary because only one unit in the generator had failed.
It also censured Taipower for negligence during its annual maintenance at the Hsinta Power Plant that caused the lights to go off for close to 5.5 million households on March 3 last year.
The power cut began at 9:16am after a problem at the power plant and power was not fully restored until 9:31pm, affecting 5.49 million households and costing Taipower about NT$760 million in compensation.
Four former executives at the Hsinta Power Plant were impeached because of that blackout, the Control Yuan said.
A fugitive in a suspected cosmetic surgery fraud case today returned to Taiwan from Canada, after being wanted for six years. Internet celebrity Su Chen-tuan (蘇陳端), known as Lady Nai Nai (貴婦奈奈), and her former boyfriend, plastic surgeon Paul Huang (黃博健), allegedly defrauded clients and friends of about NT$1 billion (US$30.66 million). Su was put on a wanted list in 2019 when she lived in Toronto, Canada, after failing to respond to subpoenas and arrest warrants from the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office. Su arrived at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport at 5am today on an EVA Air flight accompanied by a
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
Restarting the No. 2 reactor at the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant would take up to 18 months, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said today. Kuo was answering questions during a meeting of the Legislative Yuan’s Economics Committee, where legislators are considering amendments to the Renewable Energy Development Act (再生能源發展條) amid concerns about the consequences of the Pingtung County reactor’s decommissioning scheduled for May 17. Its decommissioning is to mark the end of Taiwan’s nuclear power production. However, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers have proposed an amendment to the Nuclear Reactor Facilities Regulation Act (核子反應器設施管制法) that would extend the life of existing
RSS