Taiwan plant failure leaves millions without power

Equipment failure caused an outage at a power plant in southern Taiwan on Thursday, triggering rolling blackouts across the island.

The outage in Kaohsiung trapped at least one person in an elevator and disrupted a daily briefing being given by government officials on the pandemic situation.

Taipower, the government-run electric company, said the outages affected 8.46 million households and that emergency repairs were underway.

President Tsai Ing-wen apologised for the massive blackout at a media briefing at the presidential office in Taipei.

She said an investigation would be conducted into the cause of the outage.