Is Grid in Metropolitan area healthy or not? Tokyo Olympic Games are coming in 2020, that question is recently whispered more often than not. Niiza Tunnel Fire last year, some people indicate, erupted as a bad side-effect of restrained investment.
Aged Grid is undoubtedly deteriorated.
Let us look back the amount of investment by Utilities. Tokyo Electric’s investment hit record high of \1.7trillion in 1993FY (That is one-third as of now). The useful life for steel towers, power lines, underground cables and transformers designated by low are between 25 and 42 years. If not updated, Grid will be steadily aging. But the risk is increasing not just because of its oldness.
There are two big problems. First, circumstances surrounding Power Utilities force them ameliorate cash-balance(and restrain investment), Second, therefore, gradually prevent them from correctly judging the right time for rational investment.
Let us look at cash. Nuclear Damage Compensation and Decommission Facility Corporation Act is revised, it obligates Tokyo Electric Power to reserve cash for decommission of disaster-stricken Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power. The amount of cash, which will mainly be donated by Power Grid, will be around \100billion per year.
Already, to satisfy new safety standard determined by Nuclear Regulatory Commission, huge amount of nuclear investment, which is approximately another \100billion per year, has been done. Cash balance will absolutely be tightened for Tokyo Electric Power Co.
Under such circumstances, recently, ordinary investment is so strictly monitored beforehand in the company.
To properly prove the necessity of renewal of Grid is so difficult that they evade precautionary investment for aged (but seemingly healthy) facilities, but precede one for obviously deteriorated (easily understandable) facilities such as Niiza-tunnel. To invest after the event is not bad unconditionally, but absolutely, precaution is not only better than remedy afterward, but economically more rational.
They should take account of future risk rationally when judging the necessity of investment, but the reality is away from it. Recently, there are a lot of aged facilities such as rust-eating steel towers, poor-insulation underground cables, snapping-concerned high voltage wires. Such risk should be measured properly, and precautionary maintenance will be, in the long run, more rational than post facto countermeasure.