Toshiba to build solar power plants in Fukushima

Toshiba has announced that it will build several large solar power plants near the stricken Fukushima nuclear power plant. The plants that the Japanese company wants to set up would have a combined capacity of 100MW.

The company Toshiba, which is also active in the nuclear energy market in Japan, wants to build the solar power stations instead of Minami Soma, Reuters reports. This place is about 25 kilometers from the Fukushima nuclear power plant, which was hit by a nuclear disaster in 2011. Residents of Minami Soma had to leave their residence as a result of the radiation released.

Toshiba wants to start building the solar power stations at the end of this year, so that they can be put into operation in 2014. The installed solar panels could generate a total capacity of 100MW. Toshiba is allocating 30 billion yen for the project, equivalent to almost 300 million euros.

With a capacity of 100MW, Toshiba exceeds the plans of competitor Kyocera, which announced in April that it would build a 70MW solar power plant in southern Japan. Incidentally, there were also rumors in April that the company Softbank wants to build a 200MW park on the island of Hokkaido, but these have not yet been officially announced.

In Japan, more and more companies are announcing major solar plant construction projects after the government has launched a green energy incentive program. Using feed-in tariffs, a fixed price is calculated for solar and wind energy over a period of 20 years. In this way, the Japanese government hopes to accelerate the energy transition in order to overcome power shortages as a result of closed nuclear installations in time and also to become less dependent on fossil fuels from abroad.