Island wide blackout. Major power outage, Aug. 15, 2017

Businesses controls the government. Someone missed a payment, or made an enemy.

The rule of law is always applied according to how much money the other person has.

Capitalism and democracy are just illusions to keep the masses in a constant haze.

Where I come from, the packs of dogs are gone, because they use them as cannon fodder in illegal dog fights. They also kidnap pets for that, so you are not safe walking any dog outside.

Now these are unhappy circunstances to be stuck:

Unconfirmed, there may be up to 3 deaths because of the blackout, from heart attacks while trapped on elevator, respirator machinery failure and one fire victim because of candle mishap.

If I was in such a situation I’d run out of battery on my smartphone spamming Doom Paul images on every social media.

Taiwan should speed up replacing existing nuclear, gas and petroleum plants. However, traditional wind farms simply don’t work here in Taiwan. For one thing, they keep getting destroyed by typhoons.

Either they have to go with a new design, which there are several proven designs out there already, or they should go with geothermal or ocean current power, which Taiwan is perfectly suited for.

Geothermal is well proven in Iceland, Australia, and the Philippines. There’s absolutely no reason why Taiwan can’t do it.

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There’s one reason - entrenched corruption within Taipower

But you’re right, Taiwan, which is supposed to be a tech exporting country, is dropping the ball on re-newables

I could count on one hand the number of places in Taidong that even have solar panels

Heck if I would have the courage to send anything but 911 desperate calls…

They have this sky lift thing in Vancouver’s Grouse Mountain that takes you from one side of the park to another. Dunno why I thought it would be cool to ride,…with my fear of heights. Luckily, I rode on a seat by myself but I did managed to entertain all incoming traffic with my gestures, panic looks and iron grip.

I am not talking about the Skyride, that was another nightmare. Like a Maokung gondola…for 400 people. they pack it like a Tokyo metro car at peak hours. And it takes forever to go up and another forever to go down. I am walking next time I go.

some interesting facts and figures

https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/articles/2017-08-16/worry-about-this-taiwan-power-vacuum

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That’s an interesting article

Seems incredible, but even after yesterday’s debacle the stock market in Taiwan was only down 0.22% today

How is that possible?

Last time I went through Pingtung I saw a lot.

Taiwan is installing solar arrays at a fairly rapid pace:

Good for China Petroleum! (though the pic doesn’t look terribly typhoon proof - is it an ‘artist’s impression’ or is that what they look like?)

But for the average consumer - the last time I checked the price was ridiculous - it may have improved - I haven’t checked recently

This sounds positive:

Tsai Ing-wen’s … administration is pushing renewable energy, including solar, wind, and geothermal energy production, as part of its “Nuclear Free Homeland” policy, where they hope Taiwan can free itself of dependency on nuclear power by 2025.

I do get that there must be a tremendous headwind for Tsai to plough through given most institutions are still KMT dominated

Is that the reason solar has never taken off here? I mean, tie up some panels ontop of some mid-sized buildings, hook up to their own grid and use wind and traditional sources as back-ups. Just a thought.

We wanted to put some panels on the townhouse, but the security or community people said it was forbidden.

Yep, makes the same perfect sense that it made 30 years ago

So either the decision makers are Olympic standard stupid

Or:

Corrupt

Interestingly, according this TT article, the official statement from CPC is that it was ‘possibly’ due to human error

All six generators at the power plant shut down abruptly yesterday afternoon when a natural gas supply line was cut, possibly due to human error, gas supplier CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 中油) told reporters

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As per the exiting minister’s words, he started his speech stating all science and industrial parks had not suffered disruption in their power supply and were working normally. Some smaller industrial areas suffered some disruption but it was fixed quickly.

Meanwhile, hospitals and civilians fended for themselves.

That tells you a lot about priorities in this country and answers why investors’ confidence remains solid.

Check, now we have a resurgence in batteries like never before.

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Interestingly, I know Taiwan produces a lot of solar panels…to be sold abroad.

Yes Taiwan is one of the major suppliers of the modules supposedly.
Tsais government has introduced a lot of reforms I expect large numbers of marginal farms to be converted to solar farms down south over the next few years.
There are also plans in motion for 1000 wind turbines in the Taiwan strait.

Taiwans electricity demand has increased over 40% since 2001 with a very small increase in popukation . Taiwan used a huge amount of electricity per head of population.

In many countries electricity demand has dropped down but in Taiwan industry uses over 50% of the electricity and now semiconductor factories are using more power and water for their next generation chips not less! Look into it…

Of course the other problem is climate change and too much concrete and roads which has warmed the cities tio much increasing Aircon use…the creating heat island effects…resulting in more Aircon use… Blackout.

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I thought the usual reason was people jumping off the platform.

The lack of insulation in buildings and energy efficient buildings is a huge factor too, IMO.

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The :roll_eyes: moment of the day:

Bad habit of not following SOP blamed for Aug. 15 blackout

Habit … SOP… don’t follow… mental short circuit

Those affected by the outage will get a day’s worth of electricity refunded. Yay?

https://udn.com/news/story/11419/2647048