Japan's September Power Output Falls on Lower Demand

By Megumi Yamanaka

Oct. 15 (Bloomberg) -- Japan's electricity generation dropped for a second month in September as lower temperatures during summer cut demand for cooling.

The country's 10 regional utilities reduced production by 3.8 percent to 82.98 billion kilowatt-hours last month, the Federation of Electric Power Companies of Japan said in a report in Tokyo today.

Electricity generated during the six months ended September, at 497.2 billion kilowatt-hours, was the second- highest among output recorded in the fiscal first half of previous years, the federation said. Five utilities including Hokkaido Electric Power Co. and Tohoku Electric Power Co. had record output during the period.

The following is a table of monthly electricity generation by Japan's power utilities in billions of kilowatt-hours.

------------------------------------------------------------
Month       FY 2006          FY 2007         FY 2008
                  %Change          %Change         %Change
------------------------------------------------------------
April       73.67     3.7    75.05   1.9     75.39     0.5
May         72.87     3.6    74.62   2.4     75.78     1.5
June        77.38    -0.3    79.09   2.2     77.84    -1.6
July        87.30     1.2    85.96  -1.5     94.12     9.5
August      93.34     3.4    96.20   3.1     90.93    -5.5
September   79.48    -2.5    86.27   8.5     82.98    -3.8
October     76.22     2.2    78.22   2.6
November    76.31     2.2    78.61   3.0
December    85.65    -2.9    87.13   1.7
January     86.18    -1.8    90.42   4.9
February    78.24    -1.6    88.46  13.1
March       83.82     1.5    83.49  -0.4
-----------------------------------------------------------
Full Year   971.3     0.7  10,034.9  3.3
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Source: Federation of Electric Power Companies of Japan.

To contact the reporter on this story: Megumi Yamanaka in Tokyo at myamanaka@bloomberg.net.