JA Hanasaku Fukui, an agricultural cooperative in Awara, Fukui Prefecture, began selling electricity to Hokuriku Electric Power starting Tuesday, June 11, becoming the first agricultural cooperative in Fukui to sell electricity using solar power.
In April, the cooperative installed 1,176 solar panels on a 930-square-meter area of the flat roof of its distribution center in Yamamuro, Awara.
The cooperative introduced the system in line with the government’s feed-in tariff scheme for renewable energy, a law which requires utilities to purchase electricity generated from five renewable energy sources at a fixed price for a set length of time. The panels together have a generating capacity of 111 kilowatts, and can generate about 110,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity annually. The total investment amounted to approximately 49 million yen.
It expects to earn some 4.62 million yen each year from selling electricity, and with tax incentives for electricity generation using solar energy, it hopes to recover the investment cost in around 10 years.
“We hope to support the government’s energy policies and work on promoting future use of renewable energy by our members,” said JA Hanasaku Fukui head Yuichi Tomita. “We will continue taking measures to save energy.”
(June 14, 2013)