Japan’s Tokyo Electric Power Company is eyeing the commercial startup of 1.6 GW of coal-fired power generation capacity around mid-December, a company official said Thursday. Tepco expects to start up the 1-GW No. 2 coal-fired unit at the Hitachinaka power plant in eastern Japan mid-December. It began commercial operation of the 600-MW No. 6 coal-fired unit at the Hirono thermal power plant on Tuesday, the official said. The utility’s oil demand for power generation fell this year following successful test runs in April at the two coal-fired plants at Hitachinaka and Hirono. Another 1 GW of output was added following the complete restart of Tohoku Electric’s earthquake-hit 2 GW Haramachi coal-fired power plant in the northeast, where Tepco has rights to half of the total production in fiscal 2013-2014 (April-March). In December, Tepco plans to buy around 600,000 kiloliters (122,000 b/d) of crude […]