Black-out: even Tokyo risks being left in the dark
The day before yesterday, for the first time since 2011, Tokyo received a warning of a possible blackout , which, fortunately, did not happen yesterday, but they came very close. This danger derives from the combination of the consequences of the recent strong earthquake with an increasingly pressing energy shortage every day.
Government officials warned that the energy supply would be below demand Tuesday evening, and officials from the infamous TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Co.) had said there could be partial outages if the supply squeeze continues.
According to Tepco, unplanned outages in the Tokyo and Tohoku regions could have started at 8pm local time and plunged between 2 and 3 million buildings into darkness until around 11pm. The utility known for covering the full severity of the Fukushima disaster said its hydroelectric pumping plants will stop operating in the evening when the reservoirs are drained, limiting energy production.
As a result, Commerce Minister Koichi Hagiuda said households and businesses should cut energy consumption as much as possible, as conservation measures may need to continue during this week.
The Japanese government is currently not considering the use of continuous blackouts as the country faces an electricity shortage, Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Seiji Kihara said at a news conference on Tuesday.
Tepco echoed Kihara, saying it currently has no plans to implement a series of managed and gradual blackouts that could alleviate tension on the grid, arguing that there isn't enough time to notify customers. Meanwhile, temperatures in central Tokyo were below average on Tuesday, while cloudy weather significantly reduced solar panel production.
Last week's strong earthquake that hit the northeast and took several power plants offline, causing a shortage of supply, but the reality is that Japan has very limited energy reserves for a long time. due to old thermal power plants and nuclear power plants not yet fully functional after Fukushima.
While unplanned outages would be mostly random, key infrastructures such as hospitals have installed backup generators since 2011, meaning they will be able to continue operations for hours after the grid shuts down.
To avoid blackouts, the government asked all operators to activate emergency capacities, but it was calculated that the reserves were reduced to 1% of their capacity.
Japanese tech giants like Softbank and Rakuten Group are cutting energy consumption but don't see an immediate impact on their business.
Even the technologically advanced Japan highlights how, in recent years, the problem of energy supply has been completely underestimated, trusting that the market, in any case, would have met the demand. A sensational mistake that we too are paying hard for.
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The article Black-out: even Tokyo risks staying in the dark comes from ScenariEconomici.it .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/blackout-anche-tokio-a-rischia-buio-tagli-energetici/ on Wed, 23 Mar 2022 09:00:17 +0000.