Knowledge Exchange in Japan: Power System Resilience and Asset Management

Bangladesh, Bhutan, Dominican Republic, and Vietnam face growing threats to their power infrastructure from climate-related disasters, including hurricanes, cyclones, glacial lake outburst floods, and typhoons. To strengthen the resilience of their power transmission and distribution systems, the World Bank Energy Global Practice is organizing a knowledge exchange to Japan for delegations of key energy sector agencies from these four countries to learn about resilient power system design, operations, and asset management.

Program Concept

Bangladesh, Bhutan, Dominican Republic, and Vietnam are all highly vulnerable to natural and climate-induced hazards that threaten power infrastructure and disrupt electricity supply. Despite progress in expanding electricity access, the resilience of transmission and distribution systems remains a critical gap, with disaster-related outages causing significant economic and social losses. To address this, the World Bank Energy Global Practice, with logistical and technical support from the GFDRR Tokyo Disaster Risk Management Hub, is organizing a Technical Knowledge Exchange to Japan.

The delegations, comprising representatives from energy ministries, regulatory agencies, transmission system operators, and national utilities across the four countries, will have the opportunity to learn from Japan's experience, knowledge, and best practices in disaster risk management and resilient power systems. The program will open with an overview of Japan's power sector resilience by Professor Hiroaki Nagayama of Kyoto University. Japan has spent decades hardening its power infrastructure against earthquakes, typhoons, and floods, and has developed world-class approaches to rapid restoration, asset management, and community-level energy resilience.

The delegations will meet with leading Japanese institutions including the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI/Agency for Natural Resources and Energy), the Organization for Cross-regional Coordination of Transmission Operators (OCCTO), TEPCO Power Grid, Chubu Electric Power Grid, Hitachi Energy, the City of Iida, and Kyoto University. They will also visit key energy installations in Tokyo, Nagoya, and Iida (Nagano Prefecture) including TEPCO Power Grid's Central Dispatch Center, which manages electricity supply for 28.4 million customers at 60 GW of peak demand, a micro-grid in Iida City, a mobile substation, a flood-protected substation and a live drone inspection demonstration in Nagoya. On the final day, each country delegation will develop and present a concrete action plan for applying their learnings at home.

This knowledge exchange is part of the World Bank's broader commitment to mainstreaming disaster risk management in the energy sector and is financially supported through the participating countries' World Bank investment projects.