Construction of Japan’s largest solar power plant to begin in July at a cost of ¥25 billion

Kyocera plans to start building Japan’s largest largest solar power plant this summer in the Kagoshima Bay. Located in the southern half of the country, the 70-megawatt “Kagoshima Nanatsujima Mega-Solar Power Plant” is going to use 290,000 of Kyocera’s solar modules to fill up 1.27 million square meters of land (about 314 acres). That’s three and a half times more powerful than Apple’s planned solar field to generate electricity for its new North Carolinian data center, and four times larger. Kyocera says it’s also about the size of 27 baseball stadiums, and that the plant will generate enough power (79,000MWh annually) to power 22,000 households — about a 27th the population of the nearby city of Kagoshima. The whole undertaking is planned to get under way this July at a cost of ¥25 billion (about $309 million). The companies involved — which include IHI and Mizuho — say that the project should help solve some of the energy problems the country has faced since the massive 9.0 earthquake from last year.