Amidst concerns of rising demand of power supplies, the government of Japan has asked the utilities to make plans for rolling out blackouts from the month of July. The blackouts will be planned in case the demand reaches 99 % of the capacity.
The four companies, Chubu Electric, Kansai Electric Power Co, Hokkaido Electric Power Co and Shikoku Electric Power Co have been asked by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry to implement the rolling out of blackouts.
Blackouts will be planned for as long as two hours per day. The guidelines of the ministry say that the government will issue an alert in the morning if the demand looks like reaching 99% of the capacity in the areas serviced by the four utilities.
The consumers of electricity will be notified by email, 3 to 4 hours before the planned blackout, urging the businesses and consumers to cut back on power usage. And even then if the demand keeps rising then a final alert will be sent out before the lights go off. The ministry assured that the blackout will be implemented just for two hours in a day for each area. It was also said that the prefectural government buildings, hospitals, police and fire stations will be exempted.
