Japan To Transform Golf Courses Into Solar Power Farms

Japan is a country that certainly has a heart for the planet, and this time around, they are taking a rather creative route to achieve it. Having a huge number of country clubs constructed during the real estate boom in the previous century, many of these golf courses have been abandoned. The big question now is, what do we do with all of these golf courses? It looks like there is a way to breathe new life into such old projects, as Kyocera alongside its partners have announced that they had kicked off construction on a 23-megawatt solar plant project that happens to be located on an old golf course in the Kyoto prefecture.

This solar plant project is tipped to be operational from September 2017 onward, which is still quite some while to go. Having said that, it is capable of generating a wee bit more than 26,000 megawatt hours per year, which is the same amount of electricity required to power around 8,100 typical local households. All of the electricity generated will be sold to a local utility.

Do take note that this is not the only project in the pipeline, since they have also set their sights on another abandoned golf course which is touted to end up as a 92-megawatt plant, where it will be equipped with over 340,000 solar modules, with a targeted generation of 100,000 megawatt hours per year, which would be more than triple of what the above mentioned solar power plant is capable of supplying to typical local households.

Edwin Kee
Categories: Green
Tags: Japan, solar power