Comments on: 70-MW Solar Power Plant (Japan’s Largest) to Go Online in Kagoshima

By: Shamblet

Shamblet — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 18:17:00 +0000

how long will it take to complete this project estimated?

By: Balkanvelo

Balkanvelo — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 17:54:00 +0000

Dear Sirs , via my partner in Colombo I got information that
Japan need investors for solar projects 200 -500 MGW power .I am interested to
invest in big wind and solar projects in JAPAN .

Please send me summary and contact with autorize person.

Best regards
balkanvelo@gmail.com

By: Bob_Wallace

Bob_Wallace — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 21:57:00 +0000

Do you have any evidence that fusion research is badly under funded?

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Japan can hook their grids together quickly with a AC-DC-AC link as is used with HVDC transmission.

By: lukealization

lukealization — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 21:45:00 +0000

If we invested more money in fusion, we could make it feasible much quicker – instead of the USA spending hundreds of billions on wars, for example.

Actually as another task (although massively huge), they’re current grid is split in to a 50Hz AC portion and a 60Hz AC portion, would be to fix that up over a few decades into a a single grid.

By: Bob_Wallace

Bob_Wallace — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 21:40:00 +0000

Japan needs power now.

Fusion is yet unproved. Once it is (if it is) demonstrated then it will still take many years to make it usable on a utility scale.

Fusion continues to be 20 years from now….

Japan needs to drop a big HVDC line south to islands that get a lot of sunshine in the winter. The Asian Desertec.

By: lukealization

lukealization — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 21:31:00 +0000

I never said this project was bad. I totally support it, it’s great news… As for you’re point about rooftop solar, I can agree with that, but it may be moot as I have a reply from Zach that actually confirms that *nearly* all new buildings MUST have rooftop solar anyway now…

Yep, Japan needs all the energy it can get – an ‘all of the above’ option is appropriate, in fact it’s hard to believe that they aren’t researching nuclear fusion like crazy!

By: Zachary Shahan

Zachary Shahan — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 13:57:00 +0000

If i’m not mistaken, i think the country is requiring solar on all new buildings (except in odd cases). But i have to search around for that again to make sure i’m not remembering smth wrong.

By: Zer0Sum

Zer0Sum — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 07:38:00 +0000

With the spent fuel rod pools at Fukushima precariously close to catching alight they need all the good news they can get right now…

By: Roma

Roma — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 04:59:00 +0000

Lukealization, it’s true Japan doesn’t have too much flat land lying around. However, this project is worth it. At 5 kW a pop, it would take 14,000 solar installs on homes to install 70 mWs. Now how long would that take?

Fact of the matter is that Japan needs everything – distributed generation, solar farms, wind, hydro, etc.

This project has the potential to spearhead the solar industry in Japan significantly.

By: lukealization

lukealization — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 02:46:00 +0000

Great news! I love solar energy, I think it’s a fantastic and beautifully elegant power source – but I’m going to come out and say it. 70MW hardly compares to your average Japanese NPP, which is around 2GW – to install a solar farm with a baseload capacity of a 2GW NPP, they’d need 314 x (2000 / 70) acres of land… 8,971 acres, a square more than 6km long and wide.

Now, I’m not comparing this to nuclear directly at all, which would definitely be larger due to mining and material transportation etc. – but the key here is this is done in other countries.

Japan is rather unlucky in this case, they have a very modernized high-tech nation requiring alot of power, but don’t have the land resources to generate it very effectively.

I’m a strong advocate for solar energy. I’m an even stronger advocate for rooftop solar, as it makes use of existing space.They should start investing heavily in the latter, and also follow the UK’s lead on offshore wind farm development – build dozens of London Arrays (1GW) and Atlantic Arrays (1.5GW) and Dogger Banks (9GW) off the Japanese Coast. Today. Now.