Offshore floating wind farm starts trial operation in Japan

The ministry’s spokesperson said that diversifying energy sources in Japan has become a significant national issue after the radioactive disaster at Fukushima No.1 Nuclear Power Plant, stressing that the ministry aims to take advantage of the country’ s first trial as an opportunity for widely developing wind power generation.

Japan’s first offshore floating wind farm commenced running trial operation on Wednesday off the coast of the Goto Islands, in the western Japanese prefecture of Nagasaki, local press reported.

Architectural rendering of floating offshore wind farm
©Takeshi Ishihara

According to the country’s public broadcaster Nippon Hoso Kyokai (NHK), the operation of the wind farm is conducted by a technical team of Japan’s Environment Ministry, which installed a 100-kilowatte turbine equipped with an 11-meter rotor diameter on a 60-meter tower at the offshore facility constructed about one km off the coast of Kabashima island, one of the Goto Islands.

The floating turbine trial is taking place in the Goto islands, Nagasaki Prefecture

After the ministry’s technical team performs operational data analysis over the next months and reviews the maintenance records, it will replace the 100-kW device by a larger two-megawatte generator next summer in order to sell electricity to the grid, the report added.

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