Mitsubishi Heavy Industries to build Japan's biggest wind turbine

Kyodo News International, Tokyo --Aug. 2--TOKYO

Aug. 2--TOKYO -- Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. said Monday it will build by next March Japan's largest wind turbine with a 92-meter-diameter rotor capable of generating 2.4 megawatts of electricity.

The wind turbine will be erected at the firm's Yokohama Dockyard & Machinery Works, according to the maker of a range of power generation facilities, including nuclear power plants.

With the rotor to be installed on the top of a 70-meter-high tower, the highest point reached by the rotor's blades will be 116 meters above ground, the company said.

The wind turbine will have a mechanism to generate electricity even with breezes as mild as 3.9 meters per second.

The 92-meter rotor is so large it can capture more wind than other wind turbines of a similar scale, allowing it to "generate more power overall than wind turbines in the same class now in operation in the United States and Europe," it said.

The firm projects that the Yokohama wind turbine will be able to generate electric power sufficient for some 1,200 households.

To supply this amount of power would require burning 1,200 kiloliters, or 7,548 barrels, of crude oil per year, approximately equal to 6,000 drums, it said.

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