Japan’s largest utility said it will start up the first of three units at a new natural gas-fired power plant near Tokyo in a bid to provide more electricity during the peak summer season. JERA said July 26 that the 780-MW Unit 1 at its Goi site in Chiba will come online on Aug. 1. The Goi plant is a $1.3 billion, three-unit, 2.34-GW facility that replaces a six-unit, 1.886-GW power plant that shut down in 2018. The Goi plant will use imported liquefied natural gas. Unit 1 is coming online about a month ahead of schedule. Japan has been hit by extreme heat in recent weeks, with temperatures well above 100F. The country’s electricity supply has been strained by the heat, as well as the shutdown of many older thermal power plants in recent years. Most of the country’s nuclear power plants remain offline since the 2011 Fukushima disaster. The Goi plant is jointly owned by JERA, Eneos Holdings and Kyushu Electric Power. JERA is jointly owned by Tokyo Electric Power and Chubu Electric Power. The power plant uses GE gas turbines and Toshiba steam turbines. Officials said the tie-up will allow the facility to operate at a generation efficiency of 64 percent, with a 16 percent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions compared to the old units at Goi. “The launch of new units is important because they provide safe and stable electricity while contributing to the reduction of CO2 emissions,” Masataka Sato, president of GOI United Generation, the station’s operator, said in a meeting with the media. Sato said GE turbines at the site are capable of co-firing hydrogen, although there is no plan to do so. —Darrell Proctor is a senior editor for POWER (@POWERmagazine).