News
Premier vows to shore up power grid
Premier Su Tseng-chang says the government will be taking steps to improve the national power grid and step-up risk management policies in the aftermath of 3 March islandwide blackout.
According to the Premier, the Ministry of Economic Affairs has been ordered to oversee an accelerated improvement of Taipower's operations in the fields of power grid upgrades as well as training and inspection procedures.
The statements come after the cabinet submitted a special report on the power outage to the Legislative Yuan for review.
The premier says Taipower's reserve capacity rate exceeded 24% at the time of the incident, but it still highlighted the serious lack of power grid resilience, which has been of concern for many years.
In related news, the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) says it's postponing a decision on possible adjustments to electricity rates due to volatile global fuel prices caused by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and fears over inflation.
The statement comes after the electricity price committee met yesterday for its semi-annual review of electricity rates.
According to Deputy Economics Minister Lin Chuan-neng, a decision on pricing is now being held off until 29 June at the latest following the advice of a panel of experts.
Lin says the panel argued that incorporating current high fuel prices into the government's formula for the pricing of electricity would lead to a hike in energy prices, causing already rising consumer prices to spike further.
The economics ministry is also citing the 2.36% year-on-year increase in the consumer price index in February as another reason experts opted to hold off on adjusting electricity rates for the time being.
The ministry's semi-annual reviews of electricity pricing is held in March and in September.
Electricity rates have not been raised since a 3% hike in April of 2018.
