In Japan, demand of electricity is stagnant for several years.
After The Great East Japan Earthquake, nuclear power plants have suspended operation one after another. But tense supply-demand situation has not occurred as of yet, mainly due to stagnant demand. Electric Power Industry insists it’s because power saving in this country has taken root.
Is that true? In addition to demographic factors such as aging society with fewer children, increase of unmarried people, spread of LED(Low Emission Diode) and solar power have changed the environment surrounding electricity demand.
Let us look back our lives.
Number of persons per household in Japan has been decreasing, and as of July 2014, it is 2.49. One-person household accounts for three in ten, and two-persons does for the same. These people’s way of life has astonishingly changed. Some of them don’t have refrigerators. Especially those who don’t cook for themselves, consider convenience stores as their own refrigerators. Furthermore, they have neither TV, nor PC. Now, smart phones are replacement for big screen audio and visual equipment. If you think small screen of smart phones is stressful, you are out-of-date. Now handful smart phone is de facto standard!
How about light? Although gradually, LED is spreading. Interior decoration is equipped with LED for long-time use, and with incandescent and fluorescent light for short-time use. (From the beginning, those who use smart phone alone, look it in a dark room.)
Air-conditioning demand, yes, is yet so strong in this country. But solar power is spreading overwhelmingly so that it adequately offsets the demand of air-conditioning.
Toshiba published LED for decoration in 2006, iphone was on sale in summer 2008, surplus electricity of solar power was first purchased in November 2009. Such technical and systematic changes have been realized in a decade at a stretch. These significant changes, overlapping demographic factors, have brought recent staggering demand.
If they attribute chronical stagnant demand to power saving simply, it will be called shallow thinking. Formerly, at the time of oil crisis, there was power saving boom, but afterwards, demand for electricity has restored strongly. Now, it’s not temporary “power saving”, but we are facing multiple structural factors causing stagnant demand. We should consider the reality and judge our long-term management.