{"id":5254,"date":"2013-08-22T09:10:14","date_gmt":"2013-08-22T13:10:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/?p=5254"},"modified":"2013-08-22T09:11:19","modified_gmt":"2013-08-22T13:11:19","slug":"japanese-solar-grid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2013\/08\/japanese-solar-grid.html","title":{"rendered":"Japanese solar grid"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\nAfter Fukushima, Japan is now serious about solar power.\r\nFrom Miyama, Fukuoka (pictured), in the south of Honshu to northerly Hokkaido,\r\nJapan is building solar power plants,\r\nand now needs to upgrade its grid.\r\nRooftop solar doesn’t need as many grid changes, since it delivers\r\nonsite at peak load.\r\nHey, here’s an idea: solar panels on unused industrial park areas!\r\n

\r\nYvonne Chang wrote for National Geographic 14 August 2013,\r\n\r\nJapan Solar Energy Soars, But Grid Needs to Catch Up<\/a>,\r\n

\r\n

\r\n
\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n
\r\nJapan’s renewable energy incentive law has spurred construction of so many photovoltaic farms like this one, in Miyama, that the nation is expected to be the world’s leading solar energy market this year. But Japan must upgrade its system for delivering electricity.\r\n
\r\nPhotograph from Asahi Shimbun\/Getty Images<\/em>\r\n<\/td><\/tr><\/table>\r\nA new renewable energy incentive program has Japan on track to\r\nbecome the world’s leading market for solar energy, leaping past\r\nChina and Germany, with Hokkaido at the forefront of the sun power\r\nrush. In a densely populated nation hungry for alternative energy,\r\nHokkaido is an obvious choice to host projects, because of the\r\navailability of relatively large patches of inexpensive land. Unused \r\nindustrial\r\npark\r\n<\/a> areas, idle land \r\ninside a\r\nmotor race circuit, \r\n<\/a>a former horse ranch\u2014all\r\nare being converted to solar farms. (See related, ”\r\nPictures:\r\nA New Hub for Solar Tech Blooms in Japan\r\n<\/a>.”)\r\n<\/p>\r\n

But\r\nthere’s a problem with this boom in Japan’s north. Although\r\none-quarter of the largest solar projects approved under Japan’s\r\nnew renewables policy are located in Hokkaido, the island accounts\r\nfor less than 3 percent of the nation’s electricity demand. Experts\r\nsay Japan will need to act quickly to make sure the power generated\r\nin Hokkaido flows to where it is needed. And that means modernizing\r\na grid that currently doesn’t have capacity for all the projects\r\nproposed, installing a giant battery\u2014planned to be the world’s\r\nlargest\u2014to store power when the sun isn’t shining, and ensuring\r\nconnections so power can flow across the island nation. (See related, ”\r\nIn\r\nJapan, Solar Panels Aid in Tsunami Rebuilding\r\n<\/a>.”)\r\n<\/p>\r\n\r\nTurning to Renewables\r\n<\/strong>\r\n<\/p>\r\n

Japan\r\nhistorically has had no fossil energy sources of its own; it\r\npowered much of its economic growth over the past few generations\r\nwith homegrown nuclear energy. At the start of 2011, more than 50\r\nreactors provided Japan with 30 percent of its electricity, and the\r\nplan was to increase that share to 50 percent. That scenario was\r\nupended on March 11, 2011, when the most powerful earthquake ever\r\nto shake Japan touched off a tsunami that breached the defenses of\r\nFukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant on the east coast. (See related, ”\r\nOne\r\nYear After Fukushima, Japan Faces Shortages of\r\nEnergy, Trust\r\n<\/a>.”)\r\n<\/p>\r\n

The second-worst\r\nnuclear energy accident in history displaced 70,000\r\npeople and saddled the nation with a long and difficult cleanup. (See \r\nPictures:\r\nThe Nuclear Cleanup Struggle at Fukushima\r\n<\/a>.”) The scope\r\nof the disaster was driven home for the Japanese people in\r\nrecent weeks, when the plant operator acknowledged that it\r\nhas been unable to stanch the daily flow of tens of thousands\r\nof gallons of radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean. (See related, ”\r\nFukushima’s\r\nRadioactive Water Leak: What You Should Know\r\n<\/a>.”)\r\n<\/p>\r\n

Due\r\nto opposition from local officials, all but two of Japan’s nuclear\r\npower plants are now idle. And although Prime Minister Shinzo Abe\r\nsupports a nuclear restart, his government also is addressing\r\nJapan’s needs by administering a renewable energy incentive\r\npolicy that went into effect last year before he took office:\r\na generous “feed-in” tariff.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nMuch more in\r\n\r\nthe article<\/a>.\r\n

\r\n -jsq\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After Fukushima, Japan is now serious about solar power. From Miyama, Fukuoka (pictured), in the south of Honshu to northerly Hokkaido, Japan is building solar power plants, and now needs to upgrade its grid. Rooftop solar doesn’t need as many grid changes, since it delivers onsite at peak load. Hey, here’s an idea: solar panels […]","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[14,23,24,178],"tags":[8704,167,8701,397,427,8702,12,7,8713,8714,166,6,8749],"class_list":["post-5254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy","category-renewable-energy","category-solar","category-vlcia","tag-economy","tag-fukushima","tag-georgia","tag-grid","tag-japan","tag-lake","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-renewable-energy","tag-solar","tag-tepco","tag-valdosta","tag-vlcia"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-1mK","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5254"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5254\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5256,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5254\/revisions\/5256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}

\r\nSecond worst?\r\nThat’s wishful thinking.\r\nBut at least Fukushima has\r\n\r\neven TEPCO building solar<\/a>\r\nand\r\n\r\nwind arrays<\/a>.\r\n