Japan warned of a potential electricity shortage on Tuesday as power-plant outages following a strong earthquake, coupled with colder weather, stretched the nation’s grid.
The country issued its first-ever power supply alert for the Tokyo area for Tuesday, the trade ministry said Monday evening. Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. expects reserves to fall to as low as 0% on Tuesday, according to a forecast at 11:50 p.m. local time on Monday. The expectation of a prolonged drop below 1% could trigger rolling blackouts, but Tepco hasn’t prepared for that possibility.
Tepco, which supplies power to Tokyo and eight other prefectures, including nearby Kanagawa, Chiba and Saitama, said it expects to receive up to 2.37 million kilowatts of electricity from other utility firms.
Tepco is asking households and companies to turn off unnecessary lights and set their heating at 20 degrees Celsius to save electricity. The utility earlier said it expected the power consumption rate to stand at 97% between 6 a.m. and 7 a.m. on Tuesday.
The trade ministry said power-saving will likely be needed between 8 a.m. and 11 p.m. on Tuesday for areas covered by the company.
The ministry indicated it could be the most severe electricity shortage since 2011, when Tepco conducted a planned power outage amid the electricity crunch following a powerful earthquake and tsunami and the triple meltdown at its Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant in March that year.
An earthquake in northeastern Japan last week knocked several power plants offline, sending wholesale electricity rates soaring. To make matters worse, natural gas and coal prices have surged due to a global fuel shortage, making it exceedingly expensive for the nation’s utilities to quickly procure spot deliveries.
Colder-than-normal temperatures were forecast for Japan on Tuesday, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Cloudy weather is also expected across most of the country, which will curb output from solar power facilities.
The average price for next-day delivery power jumped to ¥64.06 (54 cents) per kilowatt hour on Monday, the highest since January 2021, according to data compiled by the Japan Electric Power Exchange. Japan’s average intraday power prices between 7:30 a.m. and 11 p.m. for Tuesday delivery hit ¥80, the de-facto limit set by the government last year.
About 3.3 gigawatts of power capacity is still halted due to the impact from last week’s quake, putting pressure on the already tight supply, the trade ministry said Monday. More than 6 gigawatts were offline last week immediately after the quake.
In a time of both misinformation and too much information, quality journalism is more crucial than ever.
By subscribing, you can help us get the story right.
SUBSCRIBE NOW
