All is calm: Wind-power generators work off a jetty housing power transformers 50 meters off Kamisu, Ibaraki Prefecture, in this photo taken before the March 11 tsunami. COURTESY OF MITANI CORP.
Offshore windmills weather crisis (click title to entry - thank you)
Expansion eyed for plant off Ibaraki running at full capacity
By MINORU MATSUTANI
Staff writer
A cheap and simply structured wind-power plant proved more resistant to natural disasters than nuclear plants.
The wind plant 50 meters off the coast of Kamisu, Ibaraki Prefecture, survived the massive March 11 tsunami and is now running at full capacity supplying electricity to Tokyo Electric Power Co., which was greatly compromised when the waves crippled the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant.
The wind plant owned and operated by Fukui Prefecture-based Mitani Corp., one of Japan's two offshore wind-power plants, has seven power generators. Each generator is attached to three propeller blades sitting atop a mast that, when turning, transforms wind into electricity.
"All the windmills and transformer stations were safe. Our facilities proved resistant to tsunami," Mitani Managing Director Yoshitaka Yamamoto said.
Each mast, sunk into the seabed at a depth of 25 meters, stands roughly 70 meters above the water. The March 11 tsunami reached 5 meters, Yamamoto said. Each transformer is located on a jetty dozens of meters away from the masts and is enclosed in fiber-reinforced plastic measuring 8.3 meters x 4.3 meters and 4 meters high, he said....
