Taiwan hit by widespread power outages | Hacker News Reader

Taiwan hit by widespread power outages

asia.nikkei.com

62 pointsfomine333 comments

According to [0], Taiwan’s Minister of Economics Affairs offered to resign over the incident, which was accepted by Premier Lin Chuan

Wow. That's some major level of accepting full responsibility given that "The power outage was caused by a human technical error at state-owned gas supplier CPC Corp that affected the operations of a state-owned Taiwan Power Co power plant in northwestern Taoyuan, the two companies said at a news conference on Tuesday evening."

[0] https://time.com/4902500/taiwan-power-cut/ (Note: I had to use reader mode for the link to fully show with JS disabled)

The culture of Taiwan is heavily influenced by Japan as it was a colony of Japan for 50 years. Most of the major infrastructure originated during the Japanese colonial period. So Japanese culture is fairly well adopted. It's EVA that has a "Hello Kitty" plane, not any Japanese carrier. I know a lot of Taiwanese who grew up speaking Mandarin AND Japanese in the home and who are still fluent in Japanese. Also Taiwan fought WW2 on the side of the Japanese and was bombed by US forces.

"Also Taiwan fought WW2 on the side of the Japanese and was bombed by US forces."

Isn't that a little like saying that the Philippines fought WW2 on the side of the US? No doubt they found the US more congenial than they did the Japanese, but they didn't have much choice in the matter.

I was worried they were being annexed when I read the headline.

It will happen in the next 5 years anyways, so no need to be worried...we just don't know the timing.

There's plenty of reason to be worried about a war in Taiwan. Heavy casualties, potential for nuclear escalation, the sanctions, and the loss of manufacturing and trade would be felt throughout the world heavily ( unlike Russia where it's mostly the Russians feeling them).

Hopefully the Chinese government is paying attention to Ukraine and relearning a lesson that they should have learned while studying the Napoleonic wars - a dedicated population is impossible to subdue from an invader. And hopefully they do realise, they will be an invader regardless of the history between the two entities.

China can just starve Taiwan.

Taiwan doesn’t need to import food from the mainland to survive. China is hemmed in by Japan, Taiwan, Russia, and korea, meaning they don’t have much chance of a naval blockade either. Maybe Kinmen Island, but I’m not sure how that part of Taiwan would survive any conflict with China. 127k people live there, so I guess that’s something China could starve, or just annex it outright.

If there's a blockade on kinmen everyone could just live on the liquor. ;) Not sure if Matsu produces things, but surely they can still fish in the shallows...

But yes true that, Taiwan is agriculturally self sufficient. We had lots more local and lots less imported FMCG during pandemic, but nothing really changed.

>Taiwan is agriculturally self sufficient.

No not really...

>In 2020, the food self-sufficiency of Taiwan was 35%.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_Taiwan

Cunningham's Law - awesome!

Thanks for educating me (and everyone else here) :)

The reference that's based on is really fascinating too: https://ap.fftc.org.tw/article/2570 (note the % of wastage chart, ~30% average, unsure how to convert but if we wasted none of that (which may not be achievable even during hypothetical 'blockade', but hey) by how much would self-sufficiency raise is interesting.)

BTW, nix23 -- this I consider one of your greatest hits: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24576985

LOL!

Thank you very much, honored that you like my "hit" but please tell me where the Taiwanese Silicate producers are?

But maybe you did not understood the reference...

And even when you don't waste anything it's 68% right? That's still not 100%, and without fishing-boats (blockage remember?)...well i leave that to you.

Oh, nix23--you took me wrong, I was actually giving you a compliment!!! Everything I said was with love...I see you took it the other way tho. :)

I don't need love, i need critique...hell is that the internet or what? Stop try to change the pure and clean nature of it.

Ha. Okay, I'll do my thing, you do yours. :) ;p xx ;p

Yes, maybe we can have a discussion on a more civilized platform like twitter someday ;)

Sounds great!

A naval blockade in disputed waters the US is saying ( but not guaranteeing) they'll protect can easily escalate. But it's true that it wouldn't result in a direct bloodbath outright.

That would likely lead to open war with the US on the limit of free navigation.

I hope I'm not misreading your comment but it sounds a little to casual, no? An invasion by sea would probably be a lot more brutal than what's happening in the Ukraine, with a lot more civilian and military casualties, and of course a much bigger impact on the world economy. And of course, countries succeeding with territorial expansions would set a really bad precedent for the 21st century.

We should hope to sit out difficult geopolitical situations as long as possible. The world will probably be a lot different in 20 and 50 years. In Germany we had 40 years of separation and cold war and then suddenly - happy reunification!

No modern military would do a ww2 style beach landing. It's why we retired battleships.

You send in naval air forces to obliterate defenses on shore then send in marines.

This is probably why China is deeply invested in long range fighters (their modern fighter has significantly more range than US ones). And aircraft carriers as of late. That and enough surface warships to defend said carriers.

They should just surrender. They don't have a chance it would be a suicidal defense.

Not sure. Status quo is usually pretty powerful.

Just an anecdote but I live in Taiwan (Taipei proper) and haven't noticed or been affected by any power issues today

Agreed. I'm also in Taipei (Shilin) and equally no power issues.

The cascading outage resulted in less than a 25% overall outage across the island and for most of those impacted lasted less than 2 hours.

That said, some areas, parts of Miaoli for example, are still without power.

Yes but we won't hear from people who have lost power :)

Glad you're not affected.

They both restored power to many of the affected and many affected were in rolling blackouts. So it's possible people in either group could be posting.

Yep is happening again...the government did not upgrade the power line. Very incompetent.

I was in Taipei and didn't notice it. It made big news tho.

"malfunction"

Chinese government flexing it cyber warfare capabilities while former U.S. Secretary of State is visiting the island. Just a preview for Taiwan and Eastern Europe.

Is there a non-paywalled link?

here you go:

https://focustaiwan.tw/society/202203030007

tl;dr it was a result of a malfunction in one of the plants that caused a cascading issue.

You can see the impact of reduced usage (in comparison to the day prior) here:

https://i.imgur.com/8gbziHJ.jpg

Here is a video from the repair crew inspecting the unit:

https://i.imgur.com/aI1tmuf.mp4

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