TOKYO: Tokyo Electric Power Co said on Monday it would install gas turbine generators with a total of 250 megawatts of generation capacity using gas oil at its Hitachinaka thermal power plant as an emergency power supply source.
The company, commonly known as Tepco, said earlier it had resumed operations of the quake-hit 1,000 MW coal-fired No.1 unit at the plant on Sunday.
The plant, located in Ibaraki prefecture north of Tokyo, had been shut after the magnitude 9.0 quake that hit eastern Japan on March 11. Tepco had said the unit would be restarted by mid-July.
Tepco, which supplies one-third of Japan's electricity, said last week it will just barely be able to boost its power supply to cover estimated summer demand, leaving Japan's economic heartland vulnerable to possible rolling blackouts even as it vowed to avoid power outages in central Tokyo.
The operator of the Fukushima nuclear plant crippled by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami said that by installing more gas turbines and restarting the remaining thermal plants shut after the earthquake, its power supply at the end of August will be 10 percent more than it had estimated in a plan announced in April.
Comments
Comments are closed for this article.