I've been back from my trip to America for over a month now. The trip went well and I enjoyed being back home for a bit. Now in Japan the dog days of summer are starting. The area where I'm at is very hot and humid.
The big deal for this summer is the shortage of electricity because of the nuclear reactor accident. Even though the electricity might be short, it was decided that the scheduled blackouts should be avoided since it might caused fatalities and other problems if people were deprived of air conditioning, etc. So the government decided to have companies reduce their power use by 15% from the previous year. This restriction for companies is being enforced through giving fines, however, this restriction will not apply to households, although individuals are being urged to do what they can to conserve energy as well.
What some of the larger companies have decided to do is change their work schedule to distribute the electricity usage. For example, instead of having Saturday and Sunday off, they work those two days, but then take two weekdays off. This shifts the power use from the high demand work week to the lower peak times of the weekend.
On the television, the reports show that the total power use has been between 75 to 85 percent of the maximum output for the first half of the summer. I haven't seen if this has changed much yet since the weather started heating up this last week or so.
No comments:
Post a Comment