What happened

State-run CPC Corporation, Taiwan said a natural-gas supply line feeding the Tatan (Datan) power plant in Taoyuan was cut on the afternoon of 15 August 2017, possibly due to human error, causing all six of the plant's generating units to shut down abruptly and removing about 4.7 gigawatts of generating capacity from Taiwan's grid. Taiwan Power Company (Taipower) implemented power rationing across 17 counties and cities from roughly 6:00pm to 9:40pm that evening, affecting an estimated 6.68 million electricity users — about half of Taiwan's total. Major electronics manufacturers including Hon Hai (Foxconn), Quanta, SPIL, ASE and ChipMOS reported production disruptions, telecom base stations lost power, and industrial and science parks in Miaoli County were affected; CPC and Taipower were expected to handle compensation claims from affected industrial users. Taipower chairman Chu Wen-chen said power generation was being restored. Taiwan's Minister of Economic Affairs, Lee Chih-kung, verbally resigned immediately after the outage, with his formal resignation to follow once the power situation was resolved. This was reported and treated as an accidental equipment/supply failure rather than a deliberate attack.

When cited sources give different casualty, damage or spill figures for this event, they’re reported side by side above rather than merged into one number. See how confidence levels work.