The Choshi coast windmill

October 22, 2012

Giant off-shore wind turbine becomes Japan's latest renewable energy addition

A new, 80-meter-tall wind turbine is seen off the coast of Choshi, Chiba Prefecture, on Oct. 22. (Mainichi)

http://mainichi.jp/english/english/newsselect/news/20121022p2a00m0na011000c.html

Members of the media got their first formal look at one of Japan's largest wind turbines on Oct. 22, the giant machine towering some 80 meters above the sea off the coast of Chiba Prefecture.

The government's New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) put on the tour to show off the new addition to Japan's renewable energy generating base. The turbine, with its three 46-meter-long blades, has a maximum output of 2,400 kilowatts of electricity from its spot embedded in the sea floor about 3 kilometers from the prefectural city of Choshi. The location was chosen for its relatively high winds and because noise pollution was a minor concern so far off-shore.

The project cost some 3.5 billion yen, two-thirds of which was borne by NEDO and the remaining one-third by Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) The turbine will begin feeding power into the TEPCO grid in January next year.

As of the end of fiscal 2011, there were 1,870 wind turbines operating in Japan, each producing in the range of 1,000 to 2,000 kilowatts of electricity for a total of some 2.5 million kilowatts -- equivalent to the output of two to three nuclear reactors.

Off-shore wind farms are "wind power's trump card" in Japan, where mountainous country severely limits areas suitable for land-based wind farms, a NEDO representative stated.

In the case of the Choshi turbine, a foundation for the turbine was planted in the sea floor 12 meters below the surface. Testing of floating wind turbines, meanwhile, began in August this year with a 1,000-kilowatt capacity generator near Kabashima Island in Goto, Nagasaki Prefecture.