TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – At a press conference on Monday (April 22), Taipower President Wang Yao-ting (王耀庭) said he would remain in his post despite offering his resignation over the weekend due to public criticism over power outages.
Wang was encouraged to remain at the helm of the state-run power company at the behest of Premier Chen Chien-jen (陳建仁). Wang drew criticism as he defended front-line Taipower workers who struggled to maintain power services after the Hualien earthquake on April 3.
Wang thanked Taipower’s 20,000 workers for their dedication to restoring power quickly, per UDN. His leadership has been called into question due to outages, though he received support from his superiors, such as Deputy Economics Minister Tseng Wen-sheng (曾文生), who said Taipower reduced the number of power outages in the past 10 years by 70%.
Tseng said no public utility in the world can avoid outages and failures. The power grid will be continually upgraded, with a focus on automation, Tseng added.
Some Taipower outages have been caused by wild animals, such as blue magpie nests on electrical poles. This has led to increased inspection patrols by Taipower since the Lunar New Year.
Other power outages are associated with insufficient power generation. Tseng said public concern over electric rates hampered the development of backup capacity.
Wang also said the 10-year budget of NT$564.5 billion (US$17.3 billion) has been allocated to power plants, transmission, and distribution. Wang said new transmission lines can allow for the power consumption needs of factories, though complete implementation may take three to five years.
As for a spate of power outages in Taoyuan, Wang said the cause was fault points on power lines, which connect between 4,000 and 5,000 users.