Typhoon Reveals Safety Standards, Facility Renewal Issues

September 15, 2019

Tokyo- Typhoon Faxai, which caused extensive and prolonged power outages in Chiba Prefecture, east of Tokyo, has highlighted problems involving safety standards and facility renewal.

A focus is on whether lessons learned from the typhoon can be used in the future at a time when the severity of natural disasters has intensified amid global climate change.

One of the reasons why the blackouts spread to wider areas is the collapse of two steel towers in the city of Kimitsu, Chiba, which is estimated to have cut electricity to 100,000 households.

A total of up to 930,000 households suffered blackouts due to the latest typhoon, the 15th of the year.

As it takes a long time to fix the steel towers, Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. <9501> has recovered electricity supply to affected households by using unconventional transmission routes.

The industry ministry requires steel towers to be able to withstand winds with a speed of 40 meters per second. The collapsed towers met this requirement.

But the typhoon registered a maximum instantaneous wind speed of 57.5 meters in Chuo Ward in the city of Chiba.

Industry minister Isshu Sugawara has expressed readiness to work on reinforcing power facilities. "Due to climate change, various changes, including wind speeds and rainfalls that go beyond common sense, are occurring," he said.

Capital investment by TEPCO on its electricity supply network dropped to 210 billion yen in 2015 from some 900 billion yen in 1991.

Many people cite the aging of facilities resulting from the reduced spending as a possible cause of the massive power outages.

Kazuyuki Shiokawa, a senior engineer at TEPCO Power Grid Inc., a TEPCO unit, told a news conference on Friday that maintenance and repair costs have fallen by only several percent from the 1990s, although the number of new investment projects has been decreasing.

"Reducing investment by leaving deteriorated facilities unattended denies this company's raison d'etre," Shiokawa said.

TEPCO faces a challenge of maintaining its strong electricity supply network at a time when it is in a severe financial situation due to responses to the March 2011 nuclear accident at its Fukushima No. 1 plant, which was heavily damaged in a powerful earthquake and tsunami. Jiji Press