Welcome back to JJNN.
Today's article is from the Japanese version of Slashdot.
This is going to be yet another in the series of articles about how is trying to save energy to deal with the possible energy crisis this summer. This time the focus is on Japan's main railway company, JR. At the moment JR is trying to save money by suspending the use of escalators, cutting back on the number of trains running on their system and turning up the temperature at which the AC kicks in.
Those are all working to some degree, but according to JR that is no enough to reach there goal of cutting back on their energy usage by 15 percent when compared to last year. They went back to the drawing board and decided that the best thing for them to do would be to just turn off the AC all together in all of their stations from noon to 3pm. According to their calculations that would save enough energy to go well over their goal so they decided to only turn off the AC their 40 most busy stations from noon until 1:30pm. Even that would go over their goal so they decided to up the number of trains to the number before the earthquake (for the weekdays only) and also lower the temperature that the AC will kick in (from 31C to 29C(88F to 84F) in the stations sand from 28C to 26C (82F to 79F) in the trains. They will also start using escalators again.
It is now time for the word of the day. Today's word is 暑い(あつい). It is pronounced atsui and it means hot.
Showing posts with label saving energy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label saving energy. Show all posts
Monday, June 20, 2011
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Goverment trying to save energy
Welcome back to JJNN.
Today's article is taken out of the online version of the Mainichi Newspaper.
After the earthquake that occurred in the north east of Japan in March Japan has been facing an energy crisis of a sort. In the month or so after the quake TEPCo (Tokyo Electric Power Company) implemented daily scheduled power outages so that people would not have to deal with a complete lack of electric power. After a few weeks TEPCo was able to get its old coal fired power plants up and running again to make up for the energy difference and the scheduled power outages were stopped.
That is fine for now, but there is still a major problem looming on the horizon. That problem would be the heat of summer and the rampant use of air conditioners. Now, I am not telling the people of Japan that they shouldn't use air conditioners to cool down their houses (I hate the heat so I use an air conditioner any chance I can in the summer time), but the use of power may lead to brownouts in Japan's current state.
That is where Japan's Ministry of the Environment comes in. They have a goal of decreasing Japan's weekday power consumption by 25 percent in total. They decided that the best place to start was the many city halls and town halls throughout Japan. From July they have asked the city halls to take one day off during the week and instead work on Saturday. Sunday will be a day off like it always has been.
It's an interesting solution, but I wonder if it will really work. The people that run the town halls have to work with many other groups that do not normally work on a Saturday. In other words, even if a particular department was told to take the day off, they might not be able to because they could not make the necessary work contracts on Saturday. It seems a lot of people that work in the city offices wonder if the plan will actually work.
It is now time for the word of the day. Today's word is 電気(でんき). It is pronounced denki and it means electricity. Those scheduled power outages were a pain, but at least we knew they were coming.
Today's article is taken out of the online version of the Mainichi Newspaper.
After the earthquake that occurred in the north east of Japan in March Japan has been facing an energy crisis of a sort. In the month or so after the quake TEPCo (Tokyo Electric Power Company) implemented daily scheduled power outages so that people would not have to deal with a complete lack of electric power. After a few weeks TEPCo was able to get its old coal fired power plants up and running again to make up for the energy difference and the scheduled power outages were stopped.
That is fine for now, but there is still a major problem looming on the horizon. That problem would be the heat of summer and the rampant use of air conditioners. Now, I am not telling the people of Japan that they shouldn't use air conditioners to cool down their houses (I hate the heat so I use an air conditioner any chance I can in the summer time), but the use of power may lead to brownouts in Japan's current state.
That is where Japan's Ministry of the Environment comes in. They have a goal of decreasing Japan's weekday power consumption by 25 percent in total. They decided that the best place to start was the many city halls and town halls throughout Japan. From July they have asked the city halls to take one day off during the week and instead work on Saturday. Sunday will be a day off like it always has been.
It's an interesting solution, but I wonder if it will really work. The people that run the town halls have to work with many other groups that do not normally work on a Saturday. In other words, even if a particular department was told to take the day off, they might not be able to because they could not make the necessary work contracts on Saturday. It seems a lot of people that work in the city offices wonder if the plan will actually work.
It is now time for the word of the day. Today's word is 電気(でんき). It is pronounced denki and it means electricity. Those scheduled power outages were a pain, but at least we knew they were coming.
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