No. 62: Six companies ally to participate in the off-shore wind generation business (September 5, 2012)

Business trend:

Six companies will form an alliance and enter the off-shore wind generation business with a total investment of 120 billion yen. They are Hitachi Zosen, Toshiba, JFE Steel, Sumitomo Electric, Toa Corp., and Toyo Construction. Japan Weather Association will joint the alliance for the survey on air flow rate. They will invest 120 billion yen over a decade to construct an off-shore wind generation plant with a capacity of 300,000 kW. Hitachi Zosen will build braces, Toshiba will construct windmills, and Sumitomo Electric will lay down marine cables.

In the initial stage, they will adopt the embedded off-shore generation system, and later advance to the floating off-shore generation system. With the support from the government, they will build a pilot plant with a capacity of 7,000 kW in several locations to study feasibility and deterioration by salt damage in 2015 for the selection of the construction area. The full-scale operation of the new plant is scheduled for 2020. A wind generator has a total of 20,000 parts as an automobile, promoting wind generation will create employment. The generation cost of an embedded off-shore wind generation is estimated at between 9.4 yen and 23.1 yen, land wind generation between 9.9 yen and 17.3 yen, and large-scale photovoltaic generation between 30.1 yen and 45.8 yen in Japan. 

An alliance of six companies starts to 

spread wind generation in Japan.