Japan to construct world's largest floating solar array
Kyocera TCL Solar has started construction of what they say is the world's largest 13.7 MW floating solar power plant on the Yamakura Dam reservoir in Japan, managed by the Public Enterprises Agency of Chiba Prefecture in Japan for industrial water services.
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Scheduled for launch in FY2018 (fiscal year ending March 31, 2018), the plant will be comprised of approximately 51,000 Kyocera modules installed over a fresh water surface area of 180,000 square meters. The project will generate an estimated 16,170 megawatt hours (MWh) per year—enough electricity to power approximately 4,970 typical households—while offsetting about 8170 tons of CO2 emissions annually. This is equal to 19,000 barrels of consumed oil.
The project was initiated in October 2014, when the Public Enterprises Agency of Chiba Prefecture publicly sought companies to construct and operate a floating solar power plant to help reduce environmental impact.
With the decrease in tracts of land suitable for utility scale solar power plants in Japan due to the rapid implementation of solar power, Kyocera TCL Solar has been developing floating solar power plants since 2014, which utilize Japan's abundant water surfaces of reservoirs for agricultural and flood-control purposes. The company began operation of 1.7 MW and 1.2 MW plants in March 2015 followed by the launch of a 2.3 MW plant in June. With Kyocera Communication Systems responsible for construction and Kyocera Solar Corporation undertaking O&M (operation and maintenance) of these projects, the Kyocera Group is cultivating the technology and expertise to construct, operate and maintain floating solar power plants.
SOURCE: Kyocera; http://global.kyocera.com/news/2016/0102_knds.html
Gail Overton | Senior Editor (2004-2020)
Gail has more than 30 years of engineering, marketing, product management, and editorial experience in the photonics and optical communications industry. Before joining the staff at Laser Focus World in 2004, she held many product management and product marketing roles in the fiber-optics industry, most notably at Hughes (El Segundo, CA), GTE Labs (Waltham, MA), Corning (Corning, NY), Photon Kinetics (Beaverton, OR), and Newport Corporation (Irvine, CA). During her marketing career, Gail published articles in WDM Solutions and Sensors magazine and traveled internationally to conduct product and sales training. Gail received her BS degree in physics, with an emphasis in optics, from San Diego State University in San Diego, CA in May 1986.