Wenshan Consolidation Area in blackout 20170815

On 15 August 2017 at 4:52 p.m. NST, massive blackout hit northern half of

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...

, affecting 6.68 million households. Electricity rationing was implemented at 6:00 p.m. and the blackout fully ended at 9:40 p.m.

Event

Power plant

During the

power supply A power supply is an electrical device that supplies electric power to an electrical load. The main purpose of a power supply is to convert electric current from a source to the correct voltage, current, and frequency to power the load. As a r ...

equipment replacement for a

control system A control system manages, commands, directs, or regulates the behavior of other devices or systems using control loops. It can range from a single home heating controller using a thermostat controlling a domestic boiler to large industrial c ...

of the metering station at

Tatan Power Plant The Tatan Power Plant, Dah-Tarn Power Plant or Ta-Tan Power Plant () is a gas-fired power plant in Guanyin District, Taoyuan City, Taiwan. At the capacity of 4,384 MW, the plant is the world's largest gas turbine combined cycle power plant and T ...

Guanyin District Guanyin District () is a rural, coastal district in western Taoyuan City, Taiwan. Guanyin is the name of a Buddhist goddess. History Guanyin was originally named as Shiguanyin during the Qing Dynasty rule. It was renamed to Guanyin in 1920 dur ...

Taoyuan City Taoyuan () is a special municipality (Taiwan), special municipality of the Taiwan, Republic of China (Taiwan) located in northwestern Taiwan, neighboring New Taipei City to the north-east, Yilan County, Taiwan, Yilan County to the south-e ...

by a contractor of

CPC Corporation CPC Corporation () is a state-owned petroleum, natural gas, and gasoline company in Taiwan and is the core of the Taiwanese petrochemicals industry. History Early history CPC was founded on 1 June 1946 in Shanghai as Chinese Petroleum Corpo ...

, the worker did not switch the system from auto mode to manual mode before starting the work, causing the two gas supply pipe valves to close and stop the supply of

liquefied natural gas Liquefied natural gas (LNG) is natural gas (predominantly methane, CH4, with some mixture of ethane, C2H6) that has been cooled down to liquid form for ease and safety of non-pressurized storage or transport. It takes up about 1/600th the volu ...

fuel source for two minutes. Six generators of the power plant fully tripped due to that, disrupting the supply of 4 GW of electricity.

Public

Residents in major cities in northern Taiwan reported slow-moving traffic, stalled lifts or gondolas, and no air conditioning. Some emergency services were called to rescue trapped people and the police were manually directing traffic. And before

2017 Summer Universiade The 2017 Summer Universiade (), officially known as the XXIX Summer Universiade ( zh, t=第二十九屆夏季世界大學運動會, p=Dì èrshíjiǔ jiè xiàjì shìjiè dàxué yùndònghuì) and commonly called Taipei 2017 ( zh, t=台北2 ...

Reactions

Taipower responded by offering one day electricity charge cut from each household bill, which resulted in NT$270 million of revenue loss to the company.

President President most commonly refers to: *President (corporate title) *President (education), a leader of a college or university *President (government title) President may also refer to: Automobiles * Nissan President, a 1966–2010 Japanese ful ...

Tsai Ing-wen Tsai Ing-wen (; born 31 August 1956) is a Taiwanese politician serving as president of the Republic of China (Taiwan) since 2016. A member of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), Tsai is the first female president of Taiwan. She served as ...

apologized to the people of Taiwan through her

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, stating that electricity supply is a national security issue. Economic Affairs Minister Lee Chih-kung resigned shortly afterwards to take responsibility.

Premier Premier is a title for the head of government in central governments, state governments and local governments of some countries. A second in command to a premier is designated as a deputy premier. A premier will normally be a head of governm ...

Lin Chuan Lin Chuan (; born 13 December 1951) is a Taiwanese economist and politician who served as Premier of the Republic of China (Taiwan) from 2016 to 2017 under President Tsai Ing-wen. He served as Minister of Budget, Accounting and Statistics and M ...

appointed Deputy Minister

Shen Jong-chin Shen Jong-chin (; born 1951) is a Taiwanese politician. Education Shen obtained his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Provincial Taipei Institute of Technology and master's degree in commerce automation and management from Nation ...

as acting Minister to replace Lee. CPC Corporation Chairperson Chen Chin-te resigned three days afterwards to take responsibility of the event which was then replaced by acting Chairperson

Yang Wei-fuu Yang may refer to: * Yang, in yin and yang, one half of the two symbolic polarities in Chinese philosophy * Korean yang, former unit of currency of Korea from 1892 to 1902 * YANG, a data modeling language for the NETCONF network configuration p ...

. His resignation also was accepted by Premier Lin.

Damages

The blackout caused at least US$3 million of loss or damages to over 150 companies in industrial parks and export processing zones.

Aftermaths

President Tsai promised that her administration would conduct a comprehensive review of the

electrical grid An electrical grid is an interconnected network for electricity delivery from producers to consumers. Electrical grids vary in size and can cover whole countries or continents. It consists of:Kaplan, S. M. (2009). Smart Grid. Electrical Power ...

of Taiwan to reexamine and strengthen it.

References

{{commons category, 2017 Taiwan Massive Blackout 2017 in Taiwan

Electric power in Taiwan