Japan Enters Offshore Wind Era

Akihabara News (Tokyo) — Japan has now entered the offshore wind power era in earnest as part of the Akita Noshiro Offshore Wind Farm, the nation’s first of commercial scale, is now adding electricity to the grid.

The 33-turbine 140MW offshore wind farm cost its Marubeni Corporation-led consortium about ¥100 billion (US$750 million) to construct. It utilizes 4.2MW Vestas turbines.

Once fully operational, this farm is expected to supply annual electricity generation sufficient to power about 130,000 ordinary Japanese households.

Keiji Okagaki, president and CEO of the Akita Offshore Wind Corporation, declared, “Akita is blessed with very good wind conditions and has excellent offshore geological features. We also had a lot of support from the local government.”

The electricity generated by the farm is being supplied to the Tohoku Electric Power Company under a twenty-year contract.

The project was awarded to the Marubeni consortium in February 2015. The construction process took about two years to complete. It is divided into two locations, one off the coast of Akita Port and one off the coast of Noshiro Port.

Presently, only the twenty windmills off of Noshiro Port are running, though they are expected to be joined by the thirteen off of Akita next month.

The next commercial-scale wind farm to open is expected to come next year with the completion of the 112MW Ishikari New Port project, but it may be a couple years after that before the next one is added.

While the Japanese government has committed to a large-scale buildout of offshore wind, it is not going being realized until the second half of this decade.

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