Offshore Wind-Power Prototype Advancing at Fukushima

Further, with fewer people needed to work on the monopile, the cable-connector system also significantly reduces the health and safety risk of cable installation by cutting the number of crew transferred from one vessel to another and from vessel to monopole, he says.

“The most labor-intensive and time-consuming element of cable installation into a foundation is its connection and termination,” the spokesman says. “This can typically take four to five offshore technicians between 18 and 20 hours to pull in the cable, secure a temporary hang-off, strip back the cable, terminate the armor and hang off permanently.”

Construction of the nacelle and tower for the 7-MW wind turbine is underway at Mitsubishi Heavy Industries' Yokohama Dockyard & Machinery Works and Kobe Dockyard & Machinery Works, respectively.

The Fukushima project’s first 2-MW turbine—some 20 miles off the Coast of Naraha, Fukushima Prefecture—began generating electricity for Tohoku Electric Power Co. in November 2013. First Subsea’s system was used to connect a 22-kW cable to the 2-MW turbine and its 66-kV substation.

In addition to the University of Tokyo, Project Integrator Marubeni and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, the offshore-wind consortium includes Mitsubishi, Japan Marine United, Mitsui Engineering & Shipbuilding, Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corp., Hitachi, Furukawa Electric, Shimizu and Mizuho Information & Research.

Johanna Knapschaefer, ENR’s New England Special Correspondent, has been writing about trends in design and construction of buildings, bridges, tunnels and other infrastructure for more than a decade. She also profiles award-winning industry leaders and delves into broader construction issues such as workforce training, worker safety and health, climate change remediation and emerging offshore wind and tidal energy developments. Over the past two decades, her articles have appeared in Architectural Record, BusinessWeek, the Boston Globe, American Banker, Modern Metals, BusinessNH Magazine, Pittsburgh Magazine and many other publications. Johanna is fluent in Japanese, and taught English and academic writing in the Science and Engineering Department of Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto, while living in Japan for eight years.

When not writing, Johanna enjoys mountain climbing, singing and playing her Spanish guitar.

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