Key Thermal Plant in Quake-Hit Hokkaido Restarted Partially

September 19, 2018

Sapporo- Hokkaido Electric Power Co. brought its earthquake-affected key thermal power station partially back online for the first time in 13 days on Wednesday.

The 350,000-kilowatt No. 1 unit at the Tomato-Atsuma plant was reactivated at 9 a.m. (midnight Tuesday GMT), the company said.

It is among the plant's three generators shut down after a 6.7-magnitude temblor rocked the northernmost Japan prefecture of Hokkaido on Sept. 6. The other two units remain offline.

The partial restart of the largest thermal power station in Hokkaido, located in the town of Atsuma, one of the areas hit hardest by the quake, is expected to enhance the stability of power supply in the prefecture, making it no longer necessary for the company to seek 10 pct power-saving by customers.

In a statement issued on Wednesday, Hokkaido Electric expressed its gratitude for clients' cooperation in power-saving.

At the same time, the company asked them to make reasonable efforts as always to reduce electricity use, with demand for energy for heating set to increase toward winter in Hokkaido, one of the Japan's four main islands.

On Tuesday, the regional power utility announced a decision to restart the No. 1 unit as early as in the day's evening. But the schedule was put off as the company took longer than expected to improve the quality of water used to generate steam in the unit's boiler.

After the three Tomato-Atsuma generators were shut, Hokkaido Electric set a power-saving target of 20 pct.

Later, the company reactivated other power stations and withdrew the target on Friday, while asking households and institutional customers to cooperate to cut power consumption by 10 pct.

The reactivation of the No. 1 unit raised Hokkaido Electric's total power supply capacities to 3.91 million kilowatts, above a peak demand of 3.83 million kilowatts assumed before the temblor.

Hokkaido Electric now expects its supply capacities will remain above demand even if two or more of its aged thermal power plants break down simultaneously, on the condition that it can receive electricity supply from power companies in the Honshu main island in times of emergencies.

Of the remaining two generators at the Tomato-Atsuma power station, the 600,000-kilowatt No. 2 unit is expected to be put back into operation in mid-October or later and the 700,000-kilowatt No. 4 unit in November or later.

"We want Hokkaido Electric to continue working to fully restart the power plant while putting safety first," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, the top Japanese government spokesman, said at a press conference in Tokyo on Wednesday,

Before the earthquake, the Tomato-Atsuma plant supplied about half of the electricity consumed in Hokkaido. Jiji Press