Tohoku facing power shortfall in summer.

Tohoku facing power shortfall in summer

Yomiuri

Tohoku Electric Power Co. has estimated it could face a power shortage this summer of up to 3.3 million kilowatts--equivalent to the power needed by 1.1 million households--and might have to implement rolling outages to avert major blackouts.

Tohoku Electric has been forced to shut down nuclear and thermal power plants along the Pacific coast due to the Great East Japan Earthquake last month.

Tohoku Electric plans to purchase power from Hokkaido Electric Power Co. and install diesel power generators to boost supply, although it also will ask users to cut back on their energy usage, according to the …