Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport and Kinmen County experienced power outages yesterday, as Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) president Wang Yao-ting (王耀庭) and chairman Tseng Wen-sheng (曾文生) appeared before the Legislative Yuan to discuss a bill on electricity rates.
The airport was expected to undergo routine power maintenance, but problems during the switchover resulted in a nearly one-minute power outage at Terminal 1 at about 3am, airport management said.
The brief outage caused some flight information to not show up correctly on information boards, an issue that was also resolved in less than a minute, it added.
Photo: Lin Ching-hua, Taipei Times
Kinmen County also experienced a power outage from 11:51am to 1:49pm yesterday.
That outage was due to a transformer blowing out at the county’s Tashan Power Plant.
Taipower said that although reserve power at the plant was 54.2 percent, the system’s automatic engagement of protective measures tripped all power generation units in the county, resulting in the outage.
Kinmen has an independent power grid powered by the Tashan plant, and subsidiary plants at Siasing (夏興) and Cilin (麒麟), Taipower said, adding that it would look into the matter.
It said 40,703 residents were affected.
While appearing at the legislature to answer questions on amendments to the Electricity Act (電業法), Tseng said that areas such as Taipei’s Neihu (內湖) and Nangang (南港) districts are considered priority areas for power grid upgrades and cable changes, adding that the Taoyuan airport is also on the list.
He said the outage at the airport was an internal problem, adding that if it had been a Taipower issue, there would also be outages in the broader area.
The utility is required to dispatch technicians to troubleshoot problems and would assist customers in taking measures to prevent circuit tripping, he said.
The power going from the primary grid to the airport is operated by airport personnel, Wang said, adding that yesterday’s incident was likely an internal error as only the duty-free shops and customs area were using power at that time.
Meanwhile, lawmakers failed to reach a consensus on proposed changes to the Electricity Act, although they did agree that experts should make up at least half of the review committee that determines electricity prices.
In a bill proposed by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), the legislature would be granted the power to review any price rate increases.
The Democratic Progressive Party caucus opposes the bill, saying that professionals should review electricity rates in a nonpolitical process.
Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) told lawmakers that sending power prices changes to the legislature for review would damage the committee’s independence.
The move would make review results highly unpredictable, affecting Taipower’s financial decisions and undermining efforts to guide the company toward sustainable development, he said.
It is necessary to maintain the stability of power price announcements, as such issues affect not only Taipower, but all companies, Tseng said.
In the past few years, it has sought to make rates more predictable so that companies could estimate price fluctuations, he said.
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