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TOKYO (Reuters) – After an earthquake that devastated 5.3 million people this week, Hokkaido Electric plans to restore service by the end of Friday.
Landslides caused by an earthquake are observed in the city of Atsuma, Hokkaido, in northern Japan. Kyodo / via REUTERS
Graphic: Earthquake in Hokkaido – tmsnrt.rs/2oJz6zd
The blackout that hit Hokkaido Island in northern Japan after the earthquake on Thursday was the worst in seven years, but it would have been smaller if the plant did not depend on a single large Central. Specialists and energy managers said that power transfer was easier in other areas.
Following the Japanese disaster of March 2011, when an earthquake and tsunami caused nuclear mergers and widespread power outages, the government imposed a strengthening of the electricity market at around 70 billions of dollars solve these problems. But Hokkaido and other Japanese utilities have been slow to strengthen their networks and make them more resilient in a country that regularly experiences natural disasters, experts said.
"The crisis is primarily the result of an over-reliance on a large coal-fired power plant in a centralized production model," said Andrew DeWit, professor of energy policy at the University of Toronto. Rikkyo University of Tokyo.
"It's strange and dangerous, given the multiplicity of risks that Japan faces and has experienced in recent years."
According to the Federation of Electrical Companies of the country, the federation of the country's electricity companies said that although the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami had little impact on the number of people affected.
Hokkaido Electric Power returned electricity to just over half of the island's 2.95 million homes on Friday afternoon, after receiving supplies from Honshu and relaunching some of its production units.
The Tomato-Atsuma coal plant, which normally supplies about half of the island's electricity, has remained closed after being damaged by the earthquake. It may take a week to restore power to Hokkaido.
Hokkaido Electric aims to restore energy to about 80 percent of the island's households by the end of Friday, according to Japanese Industry Minister Hiroshige Seko.
The sudden shutdown of supplies from Tomato-Atsuma, which has three coal generator sets, has caused a huge imbalance in supply and demanded that other Hokkaido plants be triggered and closed.
"The adjustment of supply and demand is very difficult. Hokkaido's electricity grid is small and Tomato-Atsuma's share is important. It must have been much more difficult than after the great earthquake that hit eastern Japan, "said Tsutomu Oyama, professor of electrical engineering at Yokohama National University.
Hokkaido Electric invests in a new gas plant and expands the capacity of its connection to Honshu, with the closure of its only nuclear power station pending its restart in accordance with the new security guidelines imposed since the Fukushima crisis in 2011 Cost reductions have slowed the process.
The group plans to start operations of the gas group next month and complete a 50 percent increase in Hokkaido-Honshu's connection capacity next March, a spokesman for Hokkaido Electric told Reuters. These transmission lines can currently only supply about 600 megawatts of electricity.
Asked whether it was possible to draw lessons from 2011 to alleviate the current situation, the spokesman said the company had carried out exercises for scenarios including the closure of the three units at Tomato-Atsuma.
"It is difficult to answer this question because the earthquake of 2011 and the earthquake of yesterday are different situations," he said.
Report by Osamu Tsukimori and Aaron Sheldrick; Additional report by Linda Sieg; Editing by Tom Hogue
