Japan's Kansai Electric loses all coal-fired power after fire at Maizuru

Japan's Kansai Electric shut the 900 MW No. 2 coal-fired unit at Maizuru power plant early March 15 after a fire at biomass-fuel supply facilities at the power plant in Kyoto prefecture, a company spokesperson said, shutting down the remaining operable coal-fired power generation capacity.

The shutdown of the No. 2 Maizuru power plant means that Kansai Electric has lost all of the operable coal-fired power generation capacity over the two units at the Maizuru power plant. The company was in the midst of carrying out planned repair works at the No. 1 Maizuru coal-fired unit, which was shut March 6 due to facility issues.

With the 1.8 GW Maizuru power supply capacity outage, Kansai Electric's offline baseload power supply capacity rises to 2.67 GW following the Jan. 30 automatic shutdown of the 870 MW No. 4 Takahama nuclear reactor.

Coal-fired power accounts for 12% of Kansai Electric's 14.566 GW of operable thermal power generation capacity, with LNG and oil accounting for 62% and 26%, respectively.

Restarts uncertain

The local fire department confirmed the fire at the biomass-fuel supply facility was extinguished at 8:26 am local time March 15 (2326 GMT), after the blaze was confirmed at 9:52 pm March 14, the company spokesperson said.

Kansai Electric shut the No. 2 Maizuru coal-fired unit at 1:22 am March 15 after having started the shutdown process at 10:20 pm, the spokesperson said.

The local fire department has not issued operational suspension orders at the Maizuru No. 1 and No. 2 coal-fired units following the fire incident, the spokesperson added.

Kansai Electric is unsure when it will be able to restart either unit, the spokesperson said.

However, the company said it will be able to utilize other power sources to ensure its supply capacity and secure fuels.