Project in Nishigoya, Tsukuba

Tsukuba is a city about 60 km northeast of Tokyo. One of the solar sharing pioneers Ken Matsuoka launched his project there in fall 2012.

He installed 579 solar panels on a metal frame over land area of about 1500m2.

The construction - from clearing the land and building metal frame to setting panels and cables, all based on Matsuoka's design and done DIY way - took him almost a year. Everything got ready in September 2013.

As of today October 14, 2013, the site is on a test
run. Actual selling of electricity to the grid is scheduled to start tomorrow – on October  15, 2013.

Matsuoka
will sell maximum of 49.9 kW to Tokyo Electric Power Company for the fixed
price of 42 JPY/kWh, guaranteed for 20 years.

Matsuoka also introduced manual tilting system to regulate the amount of light that can reach either the panels or the ground. He can now turn panels with a total weight of more than 8 tons using a single winch. Shading rate is 25.5 % (at panel tilt 0°). The purpose of tilting is not necessarily to maximize power generation output but quite the contrary, it can be used to provide more sunshine to crops when necessary, e.g. at critical growth stages like budding.

Matsuoka adjusting panel tilt:

Matsuoka is not a professional farmer but he does have experience growing his own food. He is now producing soybeans, tomatoes, eggplants and other crops for personal consumption under the panels. The site is registered as miscellaneous land - meaning Matsuoka has to pay higher taxes compared to agricultural land, but he has more freedom to choose how to use the land, what to grow and at what quantities. When we spoke last time, Matsuoka was envisioning a rice field on one part of the land, and a community garden on another. Both are great ideas because there are few on-site trials of growing rice under solar panels, and a community garden with many people coming and growing their vegetables just sounds good. Let's see what will eventually become reality.

The best thing about solar sharing is that building and running a power plant is not anymore something that only big power companies can do. Both technologically and financially, the hurdle is now low enough so that almost anyone can build their own small solar power plant and grow food below it. This will undoubtedly change our way of thinking about electricity.

Link to Ken Matsuoka's blog (Japanese):

http://gba03100.cocolog-nifty.com/tsukuba_ss/