A major power outage hit many parts of Taiwan without warning on Tuesday afternoon. The outage affected all major cities on the country’s west coast, including Taipei, New Taipei, Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung.
State power company Taipower has attributed the blackout to an incident at the Tatan Power Plant in the northern municipality of Taoyuan. It said six generators at the gas-fired plant shut down due to human error. This brought a reduction in output of 4 million kilowatts. This in turn triggered automatic energy conservation measures at relay stations.
Taipower’s website also reported a separate issue at Taichung Power Plant at around 5pm. The Taichung plant is the largest coal-fired power station in the world.
The outage on Tuesday comes after recent problems at a plant in eastern Taiwan prompted electricity rationing at government offices. The generation problems have prompted queries about whether the government will be able to phase out nuclear power as it has planned.
