Taiwan Power Co. (Taipower), the country’s state-owned electricity supplier, plans to compensate the households affected by massive power outages affecting the Greater Taipei area on Sunday.
The power outages were caused by mechanical malfunctions of power generation equipment at the Wanlong primary substation in Taipei, which led to breakdowns at its secondary substations, said Taipower spokesman Chang Ting-shu (???) at Sunday’s news conference.
More than 300,000 households in Taipei and New Taipei were affected by the power failure, Chang said, and under Taipower’s business operation platform, the company will cut bill payment for the affected users based on the length of the power outages they had suffered.
According to Taipower’s business operation rules, industrial users will see their bills cut by the cost of one hour of power consumption if they suffered power outrages between 10 and 60 minutes long, while small business and household users will see their bill cut by one day of use if they are affected by power outages by more than one hour.
The massive power outages occurred at 9:42 a.m. Sunday after a fire broke out at the Wanlong substation. It affected a total of 305,418 households in Taipei’s Wenshan District and New Taipei’s Yonghe, Zhonghe and Banqiao districts.
Within 15 minutes after Taipower dispatched more than 100 personnel to fix the mechanical problems, power supply was restored for 90 percent of the affected users, the power company said.
At 1:07 p.m. Sunday, power supplies in these districts were fully restored, according to Taipower.
Therefore, 90 percent of the affected users are expected to not receive any compensation, while the remaining 10 percent will likely receive only NT$1 (US$0.04) in compensation.
Asked to comment on such meager compensation, Economics Minister Wang Mei-hua (???) said on Monday that she has instructed Taipower to evaluate the entire situation before giving compensation.
Legislator Lai Shyh-bao (???) from the opposition Kuomintang said at a legislative hearing on Monday that he received petitions from some business power users who expressed hopes that the Ministry of Finance (MOF) will give them tax relief in addition to the compensation from Taipower.
In response, Finance Minister Su Jain-rong (???) said as most of the enterprise users suffering from the power outages were small-sized businesses, the MOF is mulling the possibility of deducting their business tax payment based on their losses caused by the power outages.
Taipower said the power failure occurred after a distribution transformer at the Wanlong substation malfunctioned, resulting in its insulating oil catching fire, which led to an insulation failure and caused the 161 kilovolt (kV) and 69kV power supply systems to shut down.
However, the exact reason behind the malfunction has not been determined yet, Taipower said.
Meanwhile, Wang dismissed rumors that the power outages were caused by an electricity shortage, reiterating that the incident resulted from mechanical malfunctions.
She said the operating reserve margin of Taipoewr was as high as 37 percent when the incident happened, indicating power supplies were ample.
The Ministry of Economic Affairs, however, has required Taipower to review the safety of all of its substations which have the same equipment as the Wanlong substation.
The power company was also ordered to complete the examinations in 15 days and make improvement before the upcoming Lunar New Year holiday, which will start on Jan. 29, 2022.
Taipower President Chung Bin-li (???) said construction of a new indoor substation in Wanlong was completed two years ago with fire extinguishing equipment, but due to opposition from residents nearby, the new substation cannot be inaugurated.
The incident not only caused power outages in Taipei’s Wenshan District, but also resulted in abnormality in water supply in several places in Wenshan and Xinyi districts on Sunday.
Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel