Taiwan mostly resumes power supply at areas hit by blackout

SINGAPORE (ICIS)–Taiwan resumed late Thursday afternoon power supply at most of the areas hit by a widespread blackout in the morning, a source from power operator Taipower said.

“Supply in the northern regions had been restored around noon time. For [the] southern regions, only a small part remain unrestored as to 16:30 local time (08:30 GMT),” the source said.

The outage, which occurred at around 9:07 local time (01:07 GMT), had affected more than 5m people, with those in the southern regions the hardest hit, according to Taipower.

Several petrochemical producers including CPC,   Grand Pacific Petrochemical Co (GPPC)  and China Petrochemical Development Corp (CPDC)  shut their productions units in Kaohsiung because of the power outages.

The power supply malfunction was caused by an accident at Taipower’s Tsinta plant, which was then shut down, according to the company.

Other generators, such as hydro, gas and coal power plants, were then restarted gradually.

Taipower expects the problem could be fixed within the day.