Tokyo Electric Power Co. went ahead with planned blackouts in some municipalities scattered across the Kanto region and adjacent areas Monday evening.
Tokyo Electric Power Co. went ahead with planned blackouts in some municipalities scattered across the Kanto region and adjacent areas Monday evening.
The power outages, part of rolling blackouts meant to deal with a shortage of electricity after Friday's magnitude-9.0 earthquake knocked out power generation capabilities serving the nation's capital and surrounding areas, was to last from 5 p.m. through 7 p.m., officials said.
The areas to be affected were in the fifth group of municipalities scattered over a vast area in Tokyo, the six Kanto region prefectures, as well as parts of Yamanashi and Shizuoka prefectures.
While the first two rounds of rolling blackouts, initially scheduled from 6:20 a.m. through early afternoon were averted, railway operators drastically scaled back their train service.
The result was mass confusion among commuters, many starting the first day of the work and school week after the quake.
Station staff struggled to control and redirect impatient crowds to alternative transportation.
Tokyo Electric Power Co. officials said the first and second groups of cities that were targeted for stoppages were spared because of lower consumption levels.
Officials credited train companies' cancellation of many train runs along with conservation efforts by the public.
But depending on consumption levels later in the day, TEPCO officials had warned that stoppages from the third group onward may have to be implemented. They warned that electricity consumption tends to jump drastically in the evening hours when people return home and turn on appliances and start cooking.
TEPCO officials found themselves wavering on whether to implement the first group of planned outages Monday morning. At 6 a.m., officials initially announced that the first round of outages would not happen as there was a surplus in supply.
However, about an hour later, officials announced they would decide whether to implement a blackout depending on the demand-supply situation. They added that the utility may implement the first group of blackouts after all, if supply became too tight.
Then, around 9:20 a.m. they reverted to their original statement to say that the first blackout would not be put into effect.
"We would like to avoid implementing rolling blackouts as much as possible, so we have been coordinating efforts until the last minute," a TEPCO official told a news conference explaining the flip flop in policy.
According to TEPCO, as of 10 a.m. Monday, the utility company had 33 gigawatts of electricity supply compared with 29 gigawatts of demand.
"At this moment, power stoppage is not going ahead because demand is down. However, power supplies will likely stop shortly," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told a news conference Monday morning.
Municipalities subject to be affected have been divided into five groups at which blackouts will be conducted in shifts of three hours between 6:20 a.m. and 10 p.m. Some regions face two blackouts, one in the morning and the other at night.
Tohoku-Electric Power Co. said Monday it is considering rolling blackouts for the six Tohoku prefectures and Niigata Prefecture.
TEPCO has also been plagued with inaccuracy problems in issuing its lists for prospective regions to be hit by the blackouts. The mistakes included wrong or missing place names for locations to be struck. New mistakes were found after corrections had been made.
The initial list had included Arakawa Ward in Tokyo as a potential target for blackouts in the fourth group. However, officials later discovered that Arakawa was supposed to be in the fifth group.
TEPCO Vice President Takashi Fujimoto initially told a news conference Sunday night that Tokyo's 23 wards, excluding Arakawa, would be spared of the blackouts. TEPCO later changed the list to include Suginami and Nerima wards in the first group.
Train services were scaled back across the Tokyo metropolitan area Monday. In addition to preparing for the blackouts, railway operators said they were unable to secure enough train drivers.
Trains serving East Japan Railway Co.'s main lines in the greater metropolitan area were running at 20 percent of normal operation.
While the Tokaido Shinkansen Line had been scheduled to operate as usual, Central Japan Railway Co. ended up canceling 12 bullet trains starting with a Shin-Osaka bound super express train scheduled to leave Tokyo at 8:20 a.m.
Tokyo Metro subway lines, which initially planned to operate as usual, had to scale back services after other railway operators such as JR East canceled trains. Officials said train drivers could not get to work in time.
Keikyu Corp. said it would suspend operations on its lines, which include services linking Tokyo with Haneda and Narita airports, as well as Kanagawa Prefecture, after 3:30 p.m.
Many schools in the affected areas decided to close Monday, with at least 1,173 canceling classes.
The Tokyo District Court's Tachikawa branch in Tachikawa decided to postpone a hearing that involved citizen lay judges citing the snarled transportation situation.