Hokkaido Electric Power - Company History

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Financial history 1953–2026 — revenue, cost structure, balance sheet, cash flow and key ratios, year by year →

Founded 1951
Origin 電気事業再編成令により発足
Founding location 北海道札幌市
Core business at founding Generation, transmission and distribution across the whole of Hokkaido
Listed 1951
President Saito Susumu President since 2023 (age 65, as of 2026)
Current priority Infrastructure investment · Decarbonisation Restarting Tomari, expanding the Ishikariwan-Shinko LNG station and adding 3,000,000 kW of renewables
Founding
On 1 May 1951, under the Electricity Utility Reorganisation Order, Hokkaido Electric Power came into being by taking over plant contributed and transferred from the Sapporo branch of Nippon Hassoden and from Hokkaido Haiden. Its first president was Yamada Yoshihide, and the company took its place among the nine founded that same day as the general electricity utility for the whole of Hokkaido. One condition, though, set it apart from the other eight. Separated by the Tsugaru Strait, it had almost no transmission line to Honshu and had no choice but to settle supply and demand inside its own area. Once it had opened a route to funding by listing on the Sapporo Stock Exchange in August 1951 and on the First Section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange in February 1953, it pushed ahead with coal-fired development on sites close to the Sorachi and Kushiro coalfields alongside its hydro plant. Even through the 1960s, when the utilities on Honshu began moving their main effort to nuclear power, it absorbed the rising demand of the postwar recovery with a combination of coal and hydro.
The Decision
Not being connected to Honshu is what has decided the choice of generating plant. In a system that cannot count on help from a neighbour, both swings in demand and the loss of a power station have to be absorbed within the region. When the first oil crisis of October 1973 pushed the crude price up roughly fourfold, the 6,000,000 kW class oil-fired station planned for Tomatoh was recast as coal-fired capacity. With Tomatoh-Atsuma unit 1 in October 1980 a coal-centred mix set hard, and from unit 2 onward the company switched to imported coal. Siting talks for nuclear power ran at the village of Tomari from 1968, and after the installation licence of June 1984 unit 1 entered commercial operation in June 1989 — the first reactor to start up in Japan after the Chernobyl accident. By unit 3 in 2009 three reactors totalling 2,070,000 kW were in place and nuclear had reached about forty per cent of the mix. That structure, though, held together only in exchange for gathering the generating plant into central Hokkaido.
Today
With not one reactor running, capital spending alone keeps setting records. The Tomari station, whose siting at the village of Tomari was settled in 1978, has had all three units idle since May 2012. In the year to March 2026 consolidated revenue was $5.4B (¥856bn), operating profit $462.8M (¥73bn) and net profit $278.2M (¥44bn); segment profit came to $282M (¥45bn) in generation and retail and only $15.8M (¥3bn) in transmission and distribution. Capital spending ran to $955.4M (¥151bn) in generation and retail and $519.7M (¥82bn) in transmission and distribution, together nearly forty per cent above the $676.9M (¥101bn) and $446.4M (¥67bn) of the year before. Management Vision 2035, published in March 2025, puts $17.0B (¥2.55tn) into eleven years of investment, built around safety work at Tomari, an expansion of the Ishikariwan-Shinko LNG station and more than 3,000,000 kW of additional renewables. The safety spending on reactors that do not run and the roughly 600,000 kW that Rapidus will want when volume production starts in 2027 sit side by side in the same plan.
Competition
No other company in Japan has had every household in its service area lose power at the same moment. At 3.07 a.m. on 6 September 2018 the Hokkaido Eastern Iburi earthquake stopped Tomatoh-Atsuma units 1, 2 and 4 one after another, and about forty per cent of the supply capability was lost in a single stroke. Seventeen minutes later, at 3.25, some 2.95m households across Hokkaido were without power. For any of the utilities on Honshu a shortfall of that size could have been covered from a neighbour, but the output lost at Tomatoh-Atsuma was far larger than the 600,000 kW of the Hokkaido–Honshu interconnector, and there was no room to take help from Tohoku Electric Power. The company black-started the grid from hydro and restored about 99 per cent of supply in two days. The mix that had held costs down by gathering generating plant into central Hokkaido saw that same concentration become the extent of the blackout, and it was broken up again with Ishikariwan-Shinko unit 1, the company's first LNG-fired station, which entered service in February 2019.

Timeline

1951–1988Hokkaido's seat in the nine-utility system, and a power mix built for an isolated grid

  1. 1951Hokkaido Electric Power established under the Electricity Utility Reorganisation Order
  2. 1951Shares listed on the Sapporo Stock Exchange
  3. 1953Listed on the First Section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange
  4. 1962Listed on the First Section of the Osaka Stock Exchange
  5. 1968Study of a nuclear station in Hokkaido begins; Tomakomai Joint Power established
  6. 1973Tomakomai unit 1, the first oil-fired plant, enters service
  7. 1974The 6,000,000 kW oil-fired plan for Tomatoh is dropped and recast as coal
  8. 1974Niikappu unit 1, the first pumped-storage plant, enters service
  9. 1978The nuclear site is moved from an inland location to coastal Tomari village
  10. 1979The Hokkaido–Honshu interconnector (600,000 kW) comes into service
  11. 1980Tomatoh-Atsuma unit 1 enters service, fixing coal at the centre of the mix
  12. 1984Installation licence granted for Tomari unit 1
  13. 1988Tomari unit 1 reaches the stage before fuel loading

1989–2010Tomari units 1 to 3, and a mix standing on three legs

  1. 1989Tomari unit 1 begins commercial operation, the first in Japan after Chernobyl
  2. 1989Hokkaido Telecommunication Network (HOTnet) established
  3. 1991Tomari unit 2 (579,000 kW) enters service
  4. 1993Hokkai Electrical Construction lists on the Sapporo Stock Exchange
  5. 2002Tomatoh-Atsuma units 1 and 2 (950,000 kW combined) enter service
  6. 2002Tomakomai Joint Power merges with Hokkaido Plant Service
  7. 2005Hokkai Electrical Construction made a subsidiary through a takeover bid
  8. 2006HOTnet taken to full ownership by share exchange
  9. 2009Tomatoh-Atsuma unit 4 (700,000 kW) enters service
  10. 2009Tomari unit 3 (912,000 kW) enters service; nuclear reaches about 40% of supply
  11. 2009First loss since founding, on the post-Lehman downturn and high crude prices

2011–2025Redesigning an isolated grid after the nuclear shutdown and the blackout

  1. 2011All Tomari reactors shut down after the Fukushima Daiichi accident
  2. 2011Tomari unit 3 restarts in August, the first commercial reactor after Fukushima
  3. 2013Record ordinary loss of ¥128.2bn; regulated tariffs raised by 7.73% on average
  4. 2014Tariffs raised again by 15.33%; Mayumi Akihiko becomes president
  5. 2018The Hokkaido Eastern Iburi earthquake triggers Japan's first region-wide blackout
  6. 2019Ishikariwan-Shinko unit 1, the first LNG-fired plant, enters service
  7. 2019Fujii Yutaka becomes president
  8. 2020Transmission and distribution split out into Hokkaido Electric Power Network
  9. 2023Saito Susumu becomes president
  10. 2024Results turn round to ordinary profit of ¥87.3bn
  11. 2025Management Vision 2035 sets out ¥2.55tn of investment over eleven years

Founding Story

1951–1988Hokkaido's seat in the nine-utility system, and a power mix built for an isolated grid

Of the nine regional utilities created in May 1951, Hokkaido Electric alone had no meaningful transmission line to the rest of Japan, and until the Hokkaido–Honshu interconnector opened in 1979 it had to balance supply and demand entirely within its own service area. Revenue grew from $22.6M (¥8bn) in the year to March 1953 to $1.9B (¥449bn) by the year to March 1985, and over those decades the fuel question — water, then domestic coal, then imported coal, and finally nuclear — was settled less by price than by what an island system could be made to carry on its own.

A regional monopoly connected by a single interconnector

On 1 May 1951, under the Electricity Utility Reorganisation Order driven by the occupation authorities, Hokkaido Electric Power was established, taking over plant contributed and transferred from the Sapporo branch of Nippon Hassoden and from Hokkaido Haiden[1]. Its first president was Yamada Yoshihide (山田良秀), and the company began as a regional monopoly in the general electricity business, with the whole of Hokkaido as its service area. Nine companies from Hokkaido to Kyushu were founded on the same day[2], giving Hokkaido Electric a position formally equal to that of Kansai Electric Power, Tokyo Electric Power and the other regional utilities in developing generating capacity under regulated tariffs. But Hokkaido Electric carried one condition that the other eight did not. There was almost no adequate transmission line to Honshu, and the means of exchanging power across the Tsugaru Strait were limited. From its founding until the Hokkaido–Honshu interconnector (600,000 kW) came into service in 1979, Hokkaido was in effect an isolated system, with a single company carrying the whole of the supply responsibility.

The company listed its shares on the Sapporo Stock Exchange in August 1951[3] and on the First Section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange in February 1953[4], establishing a base for raising capital in the securities markets. In August 1962 it also listed on the First Section of the Osaka Stock Exchange[5], so that a regional stock was nonetheless traded on markets across the country. The power mix at the outset was centred on hydro, but Hokkaido was also one of Japan's leading coal-producing regions, and coal-fired development proceeded in parallel, taking advantage of sites close to the Sorachi and Kushiro coalfields. From the early 1960s, when Tokyo Electric Power and Kansai Electric Power on Honshu began shifting their main effort to nuclear development, Hokkaido Electric kept a power mix that absorbed the rising demand of the postwar recovery through a combination of coal and hydro.

The oil shock rewrites the generation plan

In November 1973 the Tomakomai power station unit 1, Hokkaido Electric's first oil-fired plant, entered service[6]. As a sequel to Tomakomai, which had been planned as a new heavy-oil-fired station, the original concept was to install oil-fired capacity of the 6,000,000 kW class in the Tomatoh district[7]. But in the first oil crisis of October that year the crude price leapt roughly fourfold, and the plan was recast as coal-fired capacity of the 950,000 kW class. In October 1980 Tomatoh-Atsuma power station unit 1 entered service, and units up to no. 4 were added in turn thereafter. From unit 2 onward the use of imported coal was built into the design from the start of operation, beginning the switch in fuel procurement from domestic to imported coal. The coal-based power mix became the foundation that would define Hokkaido Electric's earnings structure for the several decades that followed.

In August 1974 the Niikappu power station unit 1 entered service as Hokkaido Electric's first pumped-storage plant[8], strengthening the grid's balancing capability. But alongside coal and hydro, a third source had been under study since 1968: a nuclear power station sited at the village of Tomari, in the Shiribeshi district. It took sixteen years to reach the installation licence for unit 1 in June 1984[9], as negotiations with fishery co-operatives and local authorities dragged on. Beyond the aim of diversifying the earnings base of the electricity business, the case for nuclear siting was pushed by the supply-security consideration that an isolated system with only a thin interconnection to Honshu needed additional baseload capacity to absorb swings in demand. In April 1985 main construction work on Tomari unit 1 got fully under way, and by April 1988 the project had reached the stage just before fuel loading. Thirty-eight years after the nine-utility system was created, Hokkaido Electric stood on the point of adding nuclear power to a mix centred on coal and hydro.

Read the full history in Japanese →

Notes

  1. Hokkaido Electric Power, annual securities report, corporate history section↩
  2. Hokkaido Electric Power, annual securities report, corporate history section↩
  3. Hokkaido Electric Power, annual securities report, corporate history section↩
  4. Hokkaido Electric Power, annual securities report, corporate history section↩
  5. Hokkaido Electric Power, annual securities report, corporate history section↩
  6. Hokkaido Electric Power, annual securities report, corporate history section↩
  7. Hokkaido Electric Power, 北のあかりを灯し続けて 北海道電力五十年の歩み (Keeping the Northern Light Burning: Fifty Years of Hokkaido Electric Power)↩
  8. Hokkaido Electric Power, annual securities report, corporate history section↩
  9. ATOMICA nuclear encyclopaedia, 「北海道電力泊発電所１号炉、２号炉訴訟の経緯（10-05-02-07）」 (History of the litigation over Hokkaido Electric Power's Tomari units 1 and 2), Japan Atomic Energy Agency↩

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