"That dream remains a far cry from today's reality. Wind power contributes barely 0.9 percent (2.6 gigawatts) of Japan's total power capacity, says Paul Scalise, a research fellow at the University of Tokyo. Japan has not tapped much offshore wind power potential, in part because it lacks the shallow coastal waters exploited by European offshore wind farms.
The Fukushima project, backed by Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, is not the country's only venture into floating wind turbines. Japan's Ministry of the Environment is supporting a separate two-megawatt floating wind turbine near Kabashima Island that began operation on October 28. The projects use different technologies to stabilize the turbines against the ocean waves. Fukushima's turbine platform is a semisubmersible design with three buoyancy tanks arranged in a triangle around the turbine, Musial explains. By comparison, the Kabashima turbine platform represents a spar design that resembles a tall, thin buoy with much of its mass extending deep below the surface—offering greater inherent stability against the waves but requiring deeper waters for operation.
Norway first installed a spar design in its Hywind floating wind turbine in 2009, followed by Portugal's semisubmersible Windfloat turbine in 2011. But Japan's Fukushima project has made a mark with the world's first floating substation containing the electrical equipment needed to transfer power from turbines to shore.
Japan's offshore wind effort still faces big challenges, such as rough seas that make maintenance of wind farms difficult, Scalise says. He also warned of political obstacles raising the cost of such operations, including NIMBY (not-in-my-backyard) protests and rights to shipping lanes and fishing zones. (The Fukushima project still has to negotiate with local fishermen to build more than the first three prototype turbines.) "The farther that developers build wind farms off the coast of Japan to avoid political protests from various conflicting interest-groups and the NIMBYists, the more expensive it becomes to build, maintain and transmit electric power back to onshore customers," Scalise says.
Studies have shown that once turbines are farther than 16 or 20 kilometers at sea, they appear to be mere dots on the horizon on a clear day or perhaps even invisible otherwise, one reason why the prototype may be anchored where it is. The Fukushima project aims to deploy the full-scale wind farm beyond the horizon to avoid NIMBY concerns. But visible or not, the first prototype turbine and substation are a sign that Japan's future could be one that rises from the sea." (http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=japans-offshore-wind-power-rises-within-sight-of-fukushima-nuclear-plant)
