Taiwan, gripped by heatwave and drought, struck by power cuts for second time in a week
- Phased blackouts first hit the island, which major chip makers such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing call home, on Thursday
- Those cuts followed an outage at a plant in the southern city of Kaohsiung, worrying investors amid a global chip shortage
Taiwan launched island-wide power cuts on Monday evening following a spike in demand amid a heatwave and drought and failure at a power plant, the second such outage in the global tech hub in a week.
Phased blackouts hit the self-ruled island, which major chip makers such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) call home, on Thursday following an outage at a plant in the southern city of Kaohsiung, which worried investors amid a global chip shortage.
It was not immediately clear whether Monday’s power outage hit TSMC or other semiconductor companies, which have factories across the island. TSMC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
TaiPower said 660,000 homes were hit by a first round of power cuts and a decision would be made later in the day on whether to extend the outage.
TaiPower blamed a rise in demand after a technical failure led to the suspension of some generators in the southern Hsinta Power Plant, the same facility that caused the problem last week.