Sakai City to Create Mega Solar Project

Written by Jaymi Heimbuch

Tuesday, 01 July 2008

In an effort to clean up its air by reducing CO2 emissions, Japan announced that two gigantic solar power generation plants will be installed in Sakai City.

The title of the project is quite a mouth full – the Sakai City Waterfront Mega Solar Power Generation Plan. Say that three times fast. I guess the title has to be fitting for the size of the project, however, because the two facilities will have a 28,000 kW combined maximum capacity and will help to reduce CO2 emissions by as much as 10,000 tons annually. Not too shabby.The city will work in conjunction with Sharp Japan and Kansai Electric Power, and Sharp plans on using thin-film silicon solar modules.

Sakai hopes to be one of Japan’s greenest cities, and with this project is off to a pretty good start on their “Cool City Sakai” low-carbon metropolis initiative. Even the locations are well planned, with the first facility to be erected atop an industrial waste landfill, and the second will actually be solar power generation facilities installed on Sharp’s and other companies’ buildings in a manufacturing complex, so Sharp can run on solar, making their products just thaaaaat much greener.

With so many fun solar products coming out of Japan, as well as some residential solar requirements, I’m not surprised to see some serious solar power generation such as this in the works.

Via GoodCleanTech, Sharp

Comments (6)

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Great!
written by grace , July 01, 2008

THIS IDEA IS GREAT.. WHY DONT WE INVEST IN A SIMILAR PLAN, LIKE ALL THAT EMPTY LAND IN NEVADA.. I KNOW WE ALREADY HAVE A FEW.. LETS SPEND MONEY ADDING MORE INSTEAD OF WAR. =D

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written by Mad Marcus , July 01, 2008

It's a fine idea, but I'm surprised that they chose thin-film solar for the project. Considering the extremely limited availability of land in Japan, one would think they would want to get the most efficiency possible from what they have...something like concentrating solar thermal would seem more logical. This sort of stinks of a government subsidy in disguise, since Sharp will be benefitting considerably from supplying the panels while simultaneously consuming a portion of the power that they produce. Oh well, if governments are going to toss money away, they might as well help the environment in the process, right?

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written by Chris , July 02, 2008

Land availability is not a problem in Japan. Cheap land is a problem.

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written by Bob Wallace , July 02, 2008

There's got to be a balance between panel efficiency, panel cost, and land cost.

I would imagine the financial people took all that into account when making the decision.

(NanoSolar thin film is at 14.5%. That ain't chopped cabbage.)

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written by Corban , July 02, 2008

Put the solar panels on top of a wide building. Problem solved; you're making good use of real estate under the sun.

1 good thing
written by Sustainable Home Design , August 05, 2008

One good thing about these panels is that if land use ever does become an issue, they can be moved to a more practical place or sold and upgraded to a more effective design. One more for sustainable/reusable design.

Charles Precht
Sustainable Design
www.sustainablehomeplans.com

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