Blackouts in Taiwan caused by heatwave

TAIPEI: Taiwan faced rolling blackouts yesterday after an outage at a power plant, days after the affected electricity supplier warned that drought and heat wave conditions were creating an energy crunch.

Officials said the cause of the outage was still under investigation, saying power could be restored as early as the evening.

Taipower’s Hsinta Power Plant

– a coal- and gas-fired facility at Kaohsiung in southern Taiwan – tripped after equipment failure at a substation, said Kao Tzu Hang, a company representative. Starting 3pm local time, electricity supply on the island of 24 million people was restricted to 2 million households.