General – Taiwan
Premier Su Tseng-chang yesterday approved the resignations of Taiwan Power chairman Yang Wei-fu and president Chung Bin-li in the wake of nationwide blackouts that affected more than 5 million households and businesses on Thursday.
Human error was the cause of a malfunction at Hsinta Power Plant in Kaohsiung, the Executive Yuan said.
Deputy Minister of Economic Affairs Tseng Wen-sheng was appointed interim chairman of the state-run utility, Executive Yuan spokesman Lo Ping-cheng.
Taipower vice president Wang Yao-ting would succeed Chung as president of Taipower, Lo added.
Yang and Chung offered their resignations on Thursday, and Su approved them after receiving an initial probe into the causes of the large-scale outages.
Minister of Economic Affairs Wang Mei-hua would remain at her post and has been tasked with helping Taipower come up with a comprehensive plan to enhance the resilience of its power grid within six months, Lo said.
The failure of electric safeguards protecting Hsinta Power Plant led to a circuit malfunction at the Longqi Extra High Voltage Substation and triggered shutdowns of several power plants connected to the substation in the south of the nation.
About 10.5 million kilowatts, or one-third of Taipower’s electricity load was lost during the incident, the utility said last week.