Hokkaido Electric Power brought forward the target commissioning date for the 569.4MW Ishikariwan Shinko Power Station Unit 3 in Otaru City, Hokkaido, from December 2037 to FY2033, the company said on April 28, 2025.
The company changed the schedule after the unit was revealed to be among the winners of the second long-term decarbonization auction (LTDA). Citing the auction framework and the predictability of long-term investment recovery, it moved the planned construction start date from March 2034 to May 2030.
Unit 3 will follow the operational Unit 1 and planned Unit 2, both 569.4MW. It will be the last unit of the three-unit, 1.7GW LNG-fired power plant to come online.
Unit 1 was built by Toshiba Energy Systems & Solutions and comprises its steam turbine and a GE gas turbine. It was commissioned in February 2019. Unit 2 is scheduled to come online in FY2030. It was awarded a contract in Japan’s previous, inaugural LTDA held in FY2023 and, like Unit 3, its planned commissioning was brought forward from the originally scheduled December 2034.
Ishikariwan Shinko Power Station is Hokkaido EPCO’s first LNG-fired power plant and a key part of its transition away from coal. The two LTDA contracts are helping accelerate the process.
The main focus of the LTDA system is battery storage, hydro, nuclear, and hydrogen and ammonia conversions. However, new LNG-fired power plants expected to be converted to hydrogen in the future have been allowed to bid until the third, FY2025 round.
