Aggreko wins deal to supply power to Tokyo

Tuesday 5 April 2011

SCOTTISH experts have been called in to supply emergency power to Tokyo following the earthquake and tsunami that killed up to 27,000 people in Japan.

POWER SUPPLY: Aggreko will employ around 150 workers to operate 250 temporary generators around the Tokyo area. Picture: Lee Jin-Man/AP

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CHRIS WATT

Glasgow-based Aggreko, the world’s largest back-up generator company, has signed a contract to provide 200 megawatts of power to the millions of people whose supplies were affected by the 9.0 magnitude earthquake and resultant tsunami on March 11.

The Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant suffered a partial meltdown after the earthquake hit, and while workers are battling to prevent further radio-active leakage the facility is unlikely to resume production in the near future, if at all.Aggreko will employ around 150 workers -- including some Scots -- to operate 250 temporary generators around the Tokyo area.The firm declined to reveal how much the contract was worth, but industry analysts have suggested figures around £40 million.The generators, all built in Dumbarton, will be online for at least one year. They are due to start arriving in June.Aggreko chief executive Rupert Soames told The Herald workers would not be expected to visit any high radiation areas.“We have a general rule that we never ask people to go where I’m not prepared to go myself, which is why I was in Tokyo last week,” he said, adding that his personal Geiger counter -- the device used to measure radiation levels -- had come up with similar readings to the standard background radiation in Cornwall.He said the firm made useful contacts made when it powered the 2002 football World Cup in Japan and South Korea, and had been quick off the mark to offer services to the Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco), which operates the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant.“Within a few days of the disaster, Aggreko entered into discussions with Tepco to bring additional power to the grid,” he said. “Tepco has moved extremely fast and with great professionalism to define an engineering solution which will bring additional generating capacity to Japan. Aggreko is pleased it is able to be of assistance to the country at this very difficult time.”The Aggreko employees will be based in the Tokyo area, some 155 miles from the stricken nuclear power station, and will operate 250 temporary generators amounting to a total capacity of 200 megawatts -- equivalent to around one-quarter of the current output of the Hunterston B nuclear plant, or nearly one-tenth of the Longannet coal power plant. Each generator fits into a container around 20 feet in length, and they will be hooked up to consumers and industry in the Tokyo area.Aggreko, founded in the Netherlands, moved to Scotland in 1974. It now owns roughly 13,000 generators, equivalent in capacity to around 10% of the UK’s peak power demand.It has previously provided power to the Vancouver Winter Olympics, the Asian Games in Guangzhou and the Fifa World Cup, which brought it to Japan in 2002.More than 12,000 people in the country have been confirmed dead after the twin disasters last month, and a further 15,000 are still missing or unaccounted for nearly four weeks after the earthquake struck.Thousands of people were cleared from a 12-mile radius around the Fukushima plant amid fears of radiation poisoning, and efforts there are now focused on capturing and storing radioactive water that is leaking from the plant. Around 11,500 tonnes of water with a low level of contamination -- above the legal limit, but not dangerous to health -- will be pumped into the sea to make way in storage tanks for higher radiation water, currently leaking from a broken reactor.As of yesterday there were still more than 160,000 people living in emergency rescue centres. Search operations over the weekend recovered another 78 bodies in Japan’s north-east, but many more remain missing.

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Aggreko wins deal to supply power to Tokyo

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