Firms plan to build floating wind farm off Fukushima coast

Awsome !!

According to the Japan Electric Association, the country now has only 4 of 54 reactors in operation and yet is still running. (And loses another to a periodic maintenance shutdown next month.)

Does that not point to some amazing over-capacity?

Right on. It would be great to see an energy independent Japan.

Great idea, many countries have these type of setups and they work well. Good way to get around the lack of room on shore.

Thanks, that's the best news I have read here in a long time.

How do I get me some stock in this Marubeni Corp?

And how about the cost? I bet it is quite huge...hence, the price is not published, and conveniently termed "experimental".

Its about time someone had come to their senses to create a safer way to create energy. I sure hope that this will start to take place all over Japan so the Japanese government can get rid of all nuclear facilitys all over Japan.

And how about the cost? I bet it is quite huge...hence, the price is not published, and conveniently termed "experimental".

I bet that Marubeni is planning on making a profit on this. And I bet they are able to get ROI on a shorter time frame compared to a nuclear power plant. It is not like off shore wind farms are unheard of in other parts of the world.

Let's leave it to the private sector to innovate and reinvigorate Japan. Nice one.

Oh great. Now Japan is going to suffer from a wind shortage from using to much wind.

100,000 abandoned houses.

Wouldn't wave power be more appropriate ?

@Ewan Huzarmy,

I think wave power has huge potential for Japan. This particular company chose to go with proven technology that already has many profitable installations around the world. If the Jgov would spend only a small fraction on what it is spending towards nuclear on a couple of pilot installations for wave and tidal. I bet many companies would be very interested in making some money of this huge energy potential.

Good idea. But... Off the coast of Fukushima? Isn't quite a bit of the coast within the exclusion zone?

Ewan,

Wind power is, at present, more efficient than wave power.

Get ready for airborne wind power not floating on water but high in the sky. Experimentation is going on now and shows promise. There are even greater wind currents way up in the atmosphere.

Yes, go green, Japan and the world. It's about time.

@Paulinusa

I remember reading about such experiments a long time ago. The problem was, as far as I can remember, to find power cable materials light enough to bring the energy back down to earth. If you have some information/links on recent progress, it would be great if you could share them with us.

Anchoring wind turbines in the Jet stream would produce constant power, if the technical difficulties can be solved. If we don't dream big, we're not going anywhere.

I don't see how 12,000 kilowatts can supply 100,000 households. Correction needed here.

The CEO of this California company that's building airborne turbines was recently interviewed on Bloomberg News.

http://www.makanipower.com/

It is a "mind game" by the government. Take the same money, build houses for those who cannot return, stimulate the economy and move on. Everyone needs to respect the dead and feel sorry for the people who must abandon their homes. "There are some things we can do something about, and there are some things that we can do nothing about." Nothing can be done except abandon the homes and the pets, sadly.

Thanks paulinusa, This design is very different from the ones I have read about before. I hope it works out for them.

@ presto345: your are right - they have the number of households wrong. The math is as follows: 12MW (12,000kw) 8760 hours/year 40% efficiency factor (high estimate) = 42,000 MWhr/year. The typical Japanese household consumes about 5 MWhr/yr. So these 6 floating wind mills would cover the electricity need of about 8,400 households

hope the design is tsunami proof

@Maitake,

I hope so too. But if it isn't at least it wont poison the entire country when it falls over.

Japan's energy crisis -

Someone been listening to Bob Dylan - "The answer my friend is blowing in the wind, the answer is blowing in the wind"

The following verse seems to describe some of the people responsible for not implementing security measures and ignoring the dangers.

Yes, how many times can a man turn his head Pretending he just doesn't see ?

The answer my friend is blowin' in the wind The answer is blowin' in the wind.

I just checked wikipedia, and it seems that the current offshore wind farms are producing a capacity of 2MW per turbine.

So if we follow zichi's math, we would need at about 300 turbines to generate 500MW. Not only a clean alternative, but a cheaper one as well ... considering that England's Thanet wind farm consisting of 300 turbines cost about USD 1.2 to 1.4 billion to make (source: wikipedia). Using the same estimates, 500 turbines would cost about 2 to 2.34 billion USD.

I wonder how much Marubeni's bid on this project amounts to.

5 kilowatt a household

Ok, this is a good idea, but why is it only experimental? The technology is sound and is being used by many countries. Why aren't they going all out to make a dent in Japan's dependance on nuclear power and fossil fuels. Sadly, I only see this as a public pleasing political stunt that will have no real impact what so ever!

@Per Christer Lund,

If you are the Per Christer Lund that I think you are you come with impressive credentials. (And nice to see a fellow Scandinavian here) But I think the article states that they are aiming to generate 12MW, not that they will have a 12MW installed capacity. So without additional information I don't think you can write off 60% of the generation.

That would still only put the installation at 20.000 something households (a fifth ow what is stated), if your 5MWhr/y typical household is correct. I don't think I have had a bill with anywhere near 400KWh (5MWhr/12) on it since I came here.

As usual it would be nice if JT could provide a bit more detailed information, but I guess that wouldn't leave room for some of the wild speculations we are at times prone to here.

Right... Japanese Industry coming up with more ways to use taxpayer money. If they financed this themselves and did not use tax dollars I'd think they were really doing something.

Financing is from the Supplementary Budget... so you see, this money is actually coming from the Govt I.E. Taxpayers.

Marubeni plans to begin the experiment by the end of March, supported by Japan’s industry ministry with financing from a supplementary budget for reconstruction following the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami which triggered the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

There is one lonely wind turbine down along the Kamakura shore, I believe. Always wondered about that.

Anyway, GREAT idea and I don't care how much it costs or how much profit Marubeni makes. Get them up and running. Failures won't poison the country, as SquidB points out.

Also, JGal, what about those 100,000 abandoned houses? Where? In the Death Zone? Elsewhere, waiting for wind turbines? Anyway, used to be in the USA that many houses had a private wind mill. I'd like to see Japan sporting private windmills for electricity bought at Yodobashi and mounted right up alongside the satellite dishes one sees everywhere.

Let's make it happen, Japan! Let TEPCO become a museum to folly.

Project is government funded just like the too many airports in this country. Hopefully this will be useful.

SquidBert, "As usual it would be nice if JT could provide a bit more detailed information, but I guess that wouldn't leave room for some of the wild speculations we are at times prone to here".

Dont you think youre expecting a lot from a general news source? If you need details Im sure their are plenty of engineering journals out there. The fact that the authorities and marubeni are exploring alternatives is good news in an energy poor country, paralysed by self doubt. Wind and wave sources are ideal for an island like this, along with abundant geothermal sources Japan could go a long way to reducing its dependence of fossil fuels. As long as the costs come in right of course.

zichiFeb. 15, 2012 - 12:25PM JST

Off shore wind plants need to generate a minimum of 500MW, 80% of the time.

If that's for Japan's total offshore wind, then we have to look at the capacity factor - what power the turbine typically produces over a year divided by the total power the turbine can theoretically produce at 100% usage during the year. It's typically in the 15-40% range, so we could be looking at 1250 to 3333 MW of turbines. With typhoon season part of the Japanese year there's no guarantee that there would not be significant times of low or no output.

@Per Christer Lund and @ presto345

Our small flat averages 320 KWhr per month, so around 0.4 KW per hour, giving me a figure of around 30,000 2DKs supplied. That's a far cry from 100,000 households.

More pie-in-the-sky BS.

They are after government pork, i.e. we all will pay for this.

Better than the famous "bridges to nowhere" maybe, but still government pork and nothing else.

The most ecomical mode for those stupid windmills is when they are standing still.... that way they cost least for all of us.

7solace9:

" Right on. It would be great to see an energy independent Japan. "

Sure, but not with windmills. Those stupid contraptions are more a drain on the power grid than anything else.

Wind farm project is good news ...way better than today's "radiation spikes in Tokyo" news.

Also, JGal, what about those 100,000 abandoned houses?

Perhaps she meant to say that [a dismal] 12,000 kW can supply only 100,000 ABANDONED houses.

The thing I find misleading, in fact deliberately so, about wind turbines can be found in Zichi's last link - one hundred an two 3.6MW turbines will never produce 100% power over a year, so it's deceptive to call the wind farm a 367 MW Wind Farm. Closer to the truth might be to call it a 74 MW Farm (assuming it's producing 20% of the time over the year).

Looking at that scenario, the farm is producing around 643,000,000 kilowatt hours. Dividing that by the households they claim to cover - 320,000 - we get around 2010 kilowatt hours, or 167 kilowatt hours per month - which seems a bit low. If we assume the wind farm is producing at a better rate, say 30% of the time then we get 251 kilowatt hours per month - which whilst a more realistic figure, might be harder to achieve.