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Blackout exposes Taiwan electrical grid’s major vulnerabilities

Blackout exposes Taiwan electrical grid’s major vulnerabilities

Source:Chien-Ying Chiu

An equipment malfunction in one of the power plants led to twelve hours of power outages across Taiwan, affecting 5.5 million households. How is the blackout of March 3rd different from those that happened before? What kinds of new risks does it portend?

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Blackout exposes Taiwan electrical grid’s major vulnerabilities

By Kwangyin Liu
From CommonWealth Magazine (vol. 743 )

♦ Have you read: Does Taiwan Have Enough Power for TSMC?

On the morning of March 3rd, Taiwan experienced its longest power outage in recent memory. A total of 5.49 million households—nearly 40% of Taiwan—lost power. The semiconductor, optoelectronics, petrochemical, and steel industries all suffered disruptions. Losses are estimated to be in the tens of billions. 

Why did the lights go out this time?

According to Taipower, an incident in the Hsinta Power Plant in Kaohsiung made every generator south of a certain extra high voltage substation in Tainan go offline. Subsequently, generators in the Chiahui Power Plant, the Third Nuclear Power Plant, the Talin Power Plant, and the Nanpu Power Plant also went offline. The power grid lost a third of its capacity as a result. 

(Source: Chien-Ying Chiu)

The incident that started the whole chain reaction was human error related to use of insulation gas in a switch at the Hsinta Power Plant, which caused the power generators to trip.

An industry expert points out that this is the result of gross negligence. Sixteen thousand volts of electricity is akin to a lightning strike; it could knock out all of the generators in a power plant. The fact that there were no casualties is a miracle.  

However, since Taiwan’s entire power grid is interconnected, a malfunction at a single plant can lead to a chain reaction that has repercussions across the island.

In 2021, Taiwan also suffered from major power outages. The difference this time is the time of day it happened.

The two power outages last May were the result of a series of unfortunate events: an early heatwave that led to higher consumption, a dip in solar power in the afternoon as the sun went down, and suboptimal rainfall that hampered hydropower. All these factors contributed to a perfect storm that knocked out generators and led to rolling blackouts. 

The blackout on March 3rd happened at nine o’clock on a cool spring morning. The sun had just come up. Hydropower was operating at optimal capacity. 

The Ministry of Economic Affairs has also emphasized this point: “At the time of the incident, the operating reserve stood at 24.6%, meaning there was more than enough power.”

Three vulnerabilities of Taiwan’s power grid exposed

This begs the question: If there was enough power, why was there an outage?

The blackout on March 3rd has brought to light three critical vulnerabilities of Taiwan’s power grid. 

The first vulnerability is this: Since the entire country shares one power grid, an incident at any one plant could affect the whole of Taiwan.

One possible solution that could alleviate the risk is the establishment of regional power grids. 

Nelson Chang (張安平), Chairman of Taiwan Cement Corporation, has leveled a forceful critique at Taiwan’s current system of power distribution. In his opinion, Taiwan must develop intelligent and regional power grids. According to Chang, many European nations have already experimented with this model, and they have built energy storage facilities to support it. 

The problem is, Taiwan’s power grid is not big enough to justify regional power grids, which are costly to build. 

(Source: Taiwan Cement Corporation)

“There are pros and cons to having a bigger power grid,” says Lin Te-fu (林德福), Secretary of the Taiwan Electric Power Association. In Taiwan’s situation, it makes more economic sense to have an efficient, interconnected nationwide power grid because of the limited land area. 

However, as Taiwan pumps more and more renewable energy into its grid, it does make sense to build storage facilities around the island, to help save up all the excessive energy for a rainy day. But this calls for a substantial investment: Not only must there be brand-new infrastructure, a “smart grid” will also become a necessity. 

And so, we arrive at the second vulnerability: While it is not difficult to generate more clean energy, it is a challenge for power transmission and distribution systems to keep up. 

“Power generation in Taiwan may be cutting-edge, but our power distribution system is woefully last-century,” says an expert of the industry who has worked on the planning of smart grids. The root of the problem is that corporations are only interested in the business opportunities offered by green energy—namely, generating and selling renewable power.

By default, renewable energy is intermittent, and it requires intelligent transmission and distribution systems to help feed it into the grid without affecting overall stability. Developed nations across the globe are focused on solving this exact problem.

Ironically, since upgrading the existing power grid is hard to do and even harder to profit from, industry leaders—including Taipower itself—remain reluctant to pay it much attention.

(Source: Chien-Tong Wang)

“If all the investments end up going into renewable energy, but nothing is done about power transmission or distribution, then all this talk about energy transitioning is nothing but a farce,” says the industry expert.

The third vulnerability is this: We must ask ourselves, why was there an issue with insulation gas? This is connected to Taiwan’s insufficient power supply. 

Experts in the industry point out that in recent years, whenever a power plant underwent routine maintenance, workers were all squeezed to the breaking point. 

“It’s a hard-knock life to work in the electric power industry in Taiwan, since everyone is being asked to put everything on the line,” Chin-chung Wu (吳進忠), then-Director of the Department of System Operations at Taipower, said during an interview with the media last year. 

According to Wu, ever since the two consecutive power outages that happened last May, Taipower has been asked to maintain and repair its facilities more efficiently. Now, all repair and maintenance work that is done in power plants is being carried out by a full three shifts of hard-pressed workers. 

What is the price of such an intensive work schedule?

One technician who works at a thermal power plant, who has asked not to be named, explains that when annual maintenance was conducted in the past, it took at least two months to do a complete check-up of a set of generators. However, due to the two outages last May, Taipower has been asked to complete all maintenance work before April, which leaves only 45 days to carry out the assignment. Since no additional workers have been hired to help pick up the slack, it may be that the maintenance work is not being done with the same degree of care as before.

Imagine an athlete who plays all year but gets no rest and inadequate physical check-ups. It will be no surprise when problems begin to emerge. 

“Because there was more capacity before, we used to run generators at 80% capacity. Now, everything is running at full steam,” says this technician. “Everything that used to be part of our ‘Plan B’ has been put on the line; there is no back-up left anymore.”

“Taipower is hanging by a thread,” he goes on to say. In the past, there were enough generators to set some aside, so that even if two or three sets of generators were to go offline, no one would have noticed, much less suffer rolling blackouts. Now, since Taipower is throwing everything at the problem, a minor hiccup can lead to severe outages.

It is an indisputable fact that as clean power and decentralized electricity become more and more mainstream, the country will be unlikely to build new large-scale power plants. But it remains to be seen if Taiwan’s transmission and distribution systems can catch up with the program. 

The rolling blackouts on March 3rd shows that the problem is not as simple as “not enough power”. These are the growing pains of Taiwan’s energy transition. A great deal of time and effort must be committed before things improve. 

Taipower bears the brunt of the burden, but all Taiwanese citizens and corporations must consider this simple adage: There is no such thing as a free lunch.

If our power grid is to become more intelligent and resilient, Taipower needs to increase its investments, and power prices may go up. If we opt to continue to enjoy cheap electricity despite rising consumption and the ever-increasing complexity of energy sources, we will just have to live with the fact that the risk of frequent, devastating power outages will become harder to avoid.


Have you read?


♦ Does Taiwan Have Enough Power for TSMC?
♦ Is Taiwan headed towards an energy crisis in 2023?
♦ Taiwan needs more stable sources of green energy

Translated by Jack Chou
Edited by TC Lin
Uploaded by Penny Chiang

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