Power Protection FEATURED ARTICLE

The Wall Street Journal reports that Toshiba (News - Alert) began selling TVs in 2010 which “can switch automatically from electricity to battery power.” They were meant for emerging markets in Indonesia and Vietnam – which frequently experience power blackouts. But in July, Toshiba will sell similar TVs in Japan, The Journal reports.

“We feel that there's a very strong interest in this kind of product in Japan,” Masaaki Osumi, head of digital products and services for Toshiba, was quoted by The Journal.

Electricity demand in many industrialized economies, like Japan, tends to increase in the warmer summer months – even without the effects of a deadly tsunami and earthquake.

But The Japan Times reports the power shortages created by the quake and tsunami are expected to continue this summer and maybe even longer, “leaving companies whose production lines are already affected unsure how they will cope in the long term,” according to a story carried on TMCnet.

So Toshiba, in June, will offer consumers rechargeable batteries for backup-power needs, The Journal said. The demand for such batteries used to come from business users rather than households.

Panasonic (News - Alert) may also push up when it will offer storage batteries from March 2012, The Journal adds.

The moves by the two companies come in response to the need for backup-power systems and batteries following the quake and tsunami.

Also, GS Yuasa Corp., a battery maker Kyoto, Japan, will sell “uninterruptible power-supply systems that use lithium-ion batteries built to work during recurring blackouts,” The Journal said.

Utilities, railways, banks and police have already used backup power systems, according to The Journal.

But now other sectors are considering getting backup power.

“Japan’s power infrastructure had been so reliable that we’d never had to consider the possibility of repeated blackouts,” GS Yuasa spokesman Tsunomu Nishijima told The Journal.