Utilities have a reputation as the safe career choice. People use electricity even in a recession, the equipment is huge and isn't going anywhere, and the work keeps whole regions running. Then you line up what the Chubu Electric Power group has disclosed in recent years, and the picture gets more complicated.
Between 2023 and 2026 the group reported, or was hit with, a long list of cases: a competition-law violation, improper access to customer data, forged documents, faulty paperwork filed with regulators, unsettled contractor bills and missing reports at the Hamaoka nuclear plant, an improper seismic-evaluation case, and a mistake in how electricity rates were calculated.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7]
The easy reaction is "people should just be more careful." The more useful question is this: why do such different problems keep coming up in different departments of the same company?
The company's own reports point to a strong hypothesis: the work got more complicated and bigger faster than the way it is managed could keep up.
1. "Something comes out almost every year": mostly true, but the cases are not the same kind
In March 2023, Japan's Fair Trade Commission ordered Chubu Electric Power, Chubu Electric Power Miraiz and other utilities to stop anticompetitive conduct in retail electricity and to pay surcharges.[1] The same year, Miraiz disclosed that it had looked at and used customer information belonging to other retailers when it shouldn't have.[2]
In 2024 it came out that an employee had forged a land lease contract needed for feed-in-tariff certification at the Wada hydropower plant.[3]
In 2025, Chubu Electric Power Grid reported paperwork problems in a crow-nest removal job: chicks and eggs were captured without a permit, more than the permit allowed, and reports did not match what was actually done.[4] The Hamaoka nuclear plant then produced a more serious governance case. Payments to some contractors for safety-upgrade construction stayed unsettled for a long time, and executives in the nuclear division did not tell the board and other bodies for a long time.[5]
In January 2026, the company disclosed an improper case in the regulatory review for Hamaoka, involving how representative seismic waves were chosen.[6] On September 11 it received an external investigation report. As of September 14, the public version with personal information redacted was still to be released later.[8]
On September 10, Chubu Electric Power and Miraiz also announced a separate rate-calculation error: a cost item had been overstated by 2.7 billion yen. For the model household, customers paid about 10 yen more per month, and the total refund is estimated at about 1.2 billion yen.[7]
So yes, it keeps happening. But a cartel, a forged document, a permit failure, a procurement failure, a nuclear-regulation issue and a math mistake are not the same level of wrongdoing, and you shouldn't lump them together.
There is a pattern, but the cases are different.
2. The strongest evidence: the company itself says its management system fell short
For the Hamaoka procurement case, Chubu Electric Power's report of March 31, 2026 named several causes: weak checks within procurement, weak budget management in the nuclear division, no proper management setup for large, important projects, and poor communication with contractors.[5][9]
Regulatory review, design and construction were running at the same time, and specifications kept changing. Yet nobody had a strong enough system to manage schedule, budget and procurement together. People on site felt heavy pressure to keep to the schedule, while the organization was weak at sharing problems and solving them as a team.[9]
The fix was telling: create a dedicated function for major projects that tracks schedule, budget and procurement as one.
Put bluntly:
"It was a giant project, and we didn't manage it like one. We'll start now."
More sign-offs don't automatically mean more control. If every approver is swamped and nobody sees the whole picture, you get more stamps and no wider view.
3. The 2026 rate error shows the staffing problem even more clearly
For the September rate correction, the company named insufficient knowledge and experience among the people who calculated and checked the figures, and a review step that didn't work well enough.[7]
Its measures include securing both the quality and the quantity of staff, for example by sending in experienced people to help.
That is not just "we'll be careful." It's a change to staffing and process.
For a large rate calculation, someone has to decide how many people check it, what expertise they need, where unusual cases go, and whether the independent review really works.
If your last line of defense is "a tired person will notice," that defense is made of hope.
4. Back-office work can't run the old way either
This isn't only a story about people working outdoors.
In 2025, Chubu Electric Power set up a Business Infrastructure Support Department to help group companies with accounting, HR, digitalization and setting up new companies.[10][11]
Its own recruiting material says that at some group companies, accounting and HR work depended too much on individuals, know-how was not being built up and shared enough, staff were aging, and handing over to the next generation was running late.[11] The company also says it came late to shared services for HR and accounting.[10]
Adding businesses doesn't only add revenue. It adds accounting, payroll, contracts, legal, systems, audits and reports.
New business: "I brought growth!"
Back office: "Thanks. Now where do I put the twelve new workflows?"
New businesses bring a pile of invisible paperwork with them.
5. An average of about 30 hours of overtime hides the extremes
On an anonymous job-review site, user posts add up to about 29.5 hours of overtime a month for Chubu Electric Power and about 29.1 hours for Chubu Electric Power Grid.[12] These are not official attendance statistics, and the people who post are a self-selected group, so don't treat them as an exact company-wide average.
They are still useful for seeing differences between departments. One 2025 post from a design-role employee says that in some departments, 100+ hours a month is normal for managers. A post from a Power Grid office worker says the opposite: managers go home early and younger staff stay late.[12]
So it's not true that every manager works 100 hours.
What it suggests is that even with the same company average, workload can vary a lot by department, project and role.
A 30-hour average doesn't mean the peak is low. It may just mean you averaged the mountains and valleys into one flat number.
6. The transmission towers in the mountains are real, but "tough" means different things
Chubu Electric Power Grid officially shows patrol work on mountain transmission lines, pushing through brush up steep slopes.[13]
Transmission work covers surveying, foundations, tower assembly, stringing lines, maintenance and tree cutting. Drones are also being used to inspect towers without climbing them.[14][15]
Distribution crews may head out to restore power day or night after a disaster. Grid operations watch and control the flow of electricity 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.[16]
The hardship is different in each case:
- Mountain and high-place work is hard on the body.
- Disaster recovery is hard because it comes without warning.
- Shift work is hard on your daily rhythm.
- Grid operation is hard because of the weight of the decisions.
- Construction management is hard because of schedule, safety, budget and contractors all at once.
- Head office gets the unusual cases and the duty to explain.
"Which part is the worst?" is too simple a question.
The damage types are different.
7. "If it needs a license, they must be short of people": right direction, but a license isn't everything
Not every transmission or distribution task legally requires an electrician's license. In practice, though, the job involves high-voltage and extra-high-voltage equipment, electric shock risk, working at height, heavy machinery and disaster recovery. What you need is not one certificate but safety training, skills, field experience, equipment knowledge and teamwork.
So nobody becomes an expert the day after being hired.
In January 2026, Chubu Electric Power Grid began a trial to train electricians in India. It said securing electrical-construction workers is urgent because of population decline and aging in Japan, aging infrastructure and the growth of renewable energy.[17]
Its 2026 materials on grid usage charges also say that a stable supply needs not only investment but also keeping up construction capacity and the supply chain.[18]
You can hire someone this month. You can't install ten years of field experience by Friday.
And typhoons don't read the hiring plan before they arrive.
8. They already outsource. The bottleneck is still there
Chubu Electric Power Grid's website lists many partner companies for transmission work: surveying, foundations, tower assembly, stringing, maintenance, construction management and more.[14]
So the field is already running on a big network of specialist firms.
But outsourcing doesn't make work disappear. It changes its shape.
field work → specifications → estimates → orders → scheduling → outage coordination → safety control → change contracts → inspection → settlement
If the partner companies are short of people too, scheduling gets harder. And the more work you outsource, the more procurement, construction management and manager time the buyer needs.
Outsourcing isn't a magic spell that teleports work to another dimension.
It's closer to turning your own physical workload into contract and coordination workload.
Done well, it works. Done carelessly, it grows a new bottleneck.
9. A popular employer and a shortage of field workers can both be true
In the Mynavi and Nikkei popularity ranking for the class of 2027, Chubu Electric Power came first in the electricity, gas and energy category. For the class of 2026 it was second.[19]
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare's 2025 "Analysis of the Labour Economy" says that in 2024 the job-openings-to-applicants ratio was 1.14 across all jobs, but 2.18 for transport and machine operation and 5.12 for construction and mining. Labor shortages are showing up clearly in jobs tied to social infrastructure.[20]
There's no contradiction. People liking a company and people wanting a certain kind of job are two separate things.
"I want to work at Chubu Electric Power" and "I want to spend years on mountains in midsummer, working at height, restoring power at night and doing shift work" are not the same sentence.
Of the three Chubu Electric Power companies' 495 planned regular hires for fiscal 2026, 105 are clerical and 390 are technical. Including mid-career hiring, the plan is 715.[21]
Even when the brand is popular, the people with the right skills, the partner firms doing the field work and certain technical roles may still be too few.
A company can be popular. The mud isn't.
Mud with a company logo on it is still mud.
10. Why "young people these days" is a weak explanation
Not enough people. Mistakes happen. Paperwork gets late.
Say "young people have no grit" or "that person wasn't paying attention," and the meeting ends quickly. You only need one person to blame. And then it happens again.
Britain's Health and Safety Executive says that when you look at human error, you should look beyond the individual: workload, time pressure, staffing, procedures, equipment, organization and communication all matter. Too much work can slow people down and lead to more failures.[22][23]
It also warns that simply telling workers to "be more careful" misses the management and organizational conditions behind accidents.[24]
That doesn't mean nobody is responsible. Deliberate violations, negligence and lack of ability do exist.
But if swapping out the person still produces the same problem in the same place, look at how the place is designed before the person.
- How many cases does one person carry?
- Are unusual cases kept apart from routine ones?
- Is it safe, rather than costly, to report a problem?
- Is it clear whether the schedule or safety and accuracy come first?
- Is it decided what stops when things get busy?
- How many people and cases does each manager review?
- After outsourcing, is there staff to manage the orders?
Only after going through these can you tell how much of it really is "the individual's problem."
11. Company analysis gets interesting once you follow the flow of work
This method isn't limited to power companies.
When a scandal hits the news, don't start by hunting for a culprit. Draw the flow of work first.
demand → field → partner companies → ordering → management → approval → reporting to executives
Next, look at where volume and complexity went up. Then check whether people, authority, information and time went up at the same pace. Finally, look at the company's fix.
If the fix is only "training," "raising awareness" and "double-checking," it may still be borrowing safety from human concentration.
But if it cuts steps, separates unusual cases, clarifies authority, adds specialist staff, puts information in one place, automates and narrows what each manager covers, and makes it easier to raise a problem, then it has reached the design of the work itself.
When you size up a company, a better question than "Are the employees good?" is:
"How many jobs at once are you making those good people run?"
That tells you far more.
12. Conclusion: a stable company is not the same as an easy job
Chubu Electric Power group's public information doesn't show a simple "black company," and it doesn't show "a few bad employees" either.
To keep huge, vital infrastructure running, the field needs rare skills and has to handle sudden emergencies. Outsource the field and you add ordering, scheduling, safety, contract and settlement work. Expand the business and you add accounting, HR, legal and systems.
If management doesn't keep up along the way, formal checks pile up while real checking gets weaker.
And the company's own investigations and fixes keep coming back to the same things: management systems, budget control, procurement checks, the quality and quantity of staff, and coordination across departments.[5][9][7][10][11]
So here is the short version.
The strength of an infrastructure company is not that people never make mistakes. It is that the work is designed not to collapse when people are busy.
Stable supply can't be built on willpower.
Power lines have a load limit. Workflows need one too.
References (24)
- Japan Fair Trade Commission, “Cease-and-desist orders and surcharge payment orders against former general electricity utilities,” 2023-03-30 jftc.go.jp
- Chubu Electric Power Miraiz, customer-information incident, 2023-01-27; investigation summary, 2023-02-17. ; https://miraiz.chuden.co.jp/info/press/1210206_1938.html miraiz.chuden.co.jp
- Chubu Electric Power, FIT certification-related document forgery at Wada Hydroelectric Power Station, 2024-08-02; investigation results, 2024-08-30. ; https://www.chuden.co.jp/publicity/press/1214456_3273.html chuden.co.jp
- Chubu Electric Power Grid, improper administrative procedures in power equipment maintenance, 2025-09-11 powergrid.chuden.co.jp
- Chubu Electric Power, reports concerning inappropriate procurement procedures and long-unsettled transactions in safety improvement work at Hamaoka Nuclear Power Station, 2025-12-24 and 2026-03-31. ; https://www.chuden.co.jp/publicity/press/1217597_3273.html chuden.co.jp
- Chubu Electric Power, improper case related to formulation of design-basis seismic ground motion in the new regulatory requirements review for Hamaoka Nuclear Power Station, 2026-01-05 chuden.co.jp
- Chubu Electric Power Miraiz / Chubu Electric Power, error in cost calculation for a change filing of specified retail supply terms, 2026-09-10 miraiz.chuden.co.jp
- Chubu Electric Power, receipt of external investigation report concerning the Hamaoka seismic-evaluation case, 2026-09-11 chuden.co.jp
- Chubu Electric Power, overview of report to the Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry, 2026-03-31, especially pp. 5–6 chuden.co.jp
- Chubu Electric Power, recruitment feature on the Business Infrastructure Support Department, Part 1 chuden.co.jp
- Chubu Electric Power, recruitment feature discussing person-dependent accounting/HR work, knowledge sharing and succession, Part 2 chuden.co.jp
- Tenshoku Kaigi / Jobtalk user-submitted review aggregates and examples for Chubu Electric and Chubu Electric Power Grid. These are anonymous self-selected reports, not official company statistics. ; https://jobtalk.jp/companies/3758/answers/8247239 ; https://jobtalk.jp/companies/10009095/answers/6825219 jobtalk.jp
- Chubu Electric Power Grid, transmission-facility patrol feature describing remote mountain patrol work powergrid.chuden.co.jp
- Chubu Electric Power Grid, list of lineworker partner companies and work categories powergrid.chuden.co.jp
- Chubu Electric Power Grid, lineworker maintenance and inspection work, including drone inspection powergrid.chuden.co.jp
- Chubu Electric Power Grid, power-grid jobs and system operation. ; https://powergrid.chuden.co.jp/communicationsite/highschool/interview_05/index.html powergrid.chuden.co.jp
- Chubu Electric Power Grid, trial electrician-training program in India, 2026-01-13 powergrid.chuden.co.jp
- Chubu Electric Power Grid, regulated transmission/distribution revenue outlook revision materials, 2026-07-10 and approval, 2026-09-04. ; https://powergrid.chuden.co.jp/news/press/1218275_3281.html powergrid.chuden.co.jp
- Mynavi Career Research Lab / Nikkei, industry-specific employer popularity ranking for graduates career-research.mynavi.jp
- Japan Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, 2025 White Paper on the Labour Economy, Part II Chapter 2, securing workers for occupations supporting social infrastructure mhlw.go.jp
- Chubu Electric Power, FY2026 Recruitment Plan, 2025-03-24 chuden.co.jp
- UK Health and Safety Executive, Workload hse.gov.uk
- UK Health and Safety Executive, Introduction to human factors; Managing human failures. ; https://www.hse.gov.uk/humanfactors/topics/humanfail.htm hse.gov.uk
- UK Health and Safety Executive, Behavioural safety hse.gov.uk
