Tokyo Electric Power Co. and another utility firm have signed a contract to buy industrial water from the Ibaraki Prefectural Government for use at two power plants they are building, but the actual amount supplied covers four power plants, company officials said Monday.
The two utilities will have to pay about 250 million yen a year for the excess water.
"It can be called a waste," a TEPCO official said. "But when we first submitted papers to sign the contract, we were thinking a bit about building a third plant. But I don't know anything about a fourth plant."
Under the contract signed earlier this year between TEPCO, the semigovernmental Electric Power Development Co. and the Ibaraki government, the two firms will receive 20,000 cubic meters of water a day beginning in 2008, though their two plants will consume only a total of only 10,000 cubic meters per day, the officials told Kyodo News.
TEPCO and EPDC, an electric power wholesaler set up by the government, are building two coal-burning power plants in the village of Tokai in the prefecture.
One of the plants belongs to TEPCO and the other to EPDC, but the wholesale firm is considering selling the plant to TEPCO, the officials said.