Background and Methodology
Commissioned by the National Science and Technology Council, a professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at National Sun Yat-sen University began conducting a survey of Taiwan's recent power supply reliability risks early this year, against the backdrop of the 2025 blackout in mainland Spain and Portugal and Taiwan's past 815 and 513 blackouts. The report stresses that power resilience is vital to national strength, compiling 12 core power supply reliability risk indicators, with questionnaires sent to academics, industry experts, and current and retired Taipower managers, collecting 103 responses.
Top Two Risks by Severity
The severity assessment shows two risks with highly consistent agreement across expert groups: large-scale incidents caused by the high concentration of critical nodes, and inconsistent energy policy. The high concentration of critical nodes ranked first with a mean score of 4 on a 5-point scale, with nearly 20% of respondents viewing it as a risk that has already materialized rather than a future scenario. The third most severe risk was disruption from interdependence of cross-system critical infrastructure.
Vulnerability of Critical Nodes and Policy Divergence
The report notes that Taiwan's power system is dominated by centralized power plants, 345KV extra-high-voltage substations, LNG receiving terminals and storage tanks. In the event of natural disasters, attacks or blockades, the lack of backup power equipment would trigger cross-regional, prolonged blackout risks. Inconsistent energy policy involves lagging decision-making on AI data center emerging power demand, as well as a lack of consensus on energy policy among the Ministry of Economic Affairs, the Ministry of Environment, the National Science and Technology Council and local governments, and the absence of a cross-agency communication platform, thereby increasing medium- to long-term power supply risks.
Urgency Assessment and Responses
In terms of urgency, experts and the power sector expect the earliest risk to materialize to be unclear cross-agency governance and responsibilities, on average in 1.8 years, followed by erosion from manpower and financial shortfalls, on average in 2 years. Chen Chung-shun, Associate Research Fellow at the Green Economy Research Center of the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research, noted that Taiwan's power supply is concentrated in large power plants, extra-high-voltage lines and LNG storage tanks, and past war games showed that power supply would be severely hit once attacked. He said the government's energy policy is highly centralized on natural gas power generation, which is most vulnerable in terms of safety stock days and long-distance transport, adding that Taiwan still needs to rely on nuclear power and that nuclear plants are less likely to be attacked in wartime. Taipower responded that it has established a risk control center for daily monitoring of power transmission, generation, distribution and engineering projects, and is drawing on overseas cases and implementing demand response mechanisms to cope with the dual pressures of rapidly expanding AI loads and extreme weather.