Japan's electricity demand down 5.5% in October

Power demand in Japan fell 5.5 percent in October from a year earlier.

This marks the eighth straight month of year-on-year declines since the quake, according to the calculations based on daily data from the Electric Power System Council of Japan.

Mandatory curbs on peak-hour usage by large customers in the country's northeast, where several power plants were damaged, were lifted in early September, after helping nationwide energy demand fall by 12.1 percent in August.

The government had introduced the restrictions as only a handful of Japan's 54 commercial nuclear reactors are online, with public confidence in atomic safety decimated in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear crisis, sparked by the quake and tsunami.

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