Feb. 27 (Bloomberg) — Vestas Wind Systems A/S, the market
leader for wind turbines in Japan, said the country needs to
improve access to the electricity grid and allow power sales
across regions to boost renewable energy use, including wind.
Vestas Chief Executive Officer Ditlev Engel made the
comments in an address at the Wind Expo 2013 in Tokyo today. The
company wants to increase cooperation with Japanese companies to
expand the wind energy market in the country, he said earlier in
an interview.
“We are very happy to share all the lessons we have
learned and the knowledge we have gained,” Engel said. He
declined to comment on talks with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries
Ltd. that the companies announced in August.
Japan, which lags behind countries such as China and the
U.S. in wind installations, plans to generate more clean energy
after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster. Japan was ranked 13th
in the world with 2,614 megawatts of installed wind capacity at
the end of last year, according to the Global Wind Energy
Council.
Aarhus, Denmark-based Vestas and Mitsubishi Heavy are in
talks to develop an 8-megawatt turbine, the industry’s biggest,
Vestas Chief Financial Officer Dag Andresen said in November.
Earlier this month, a committee appointed by Japan’s
government recommended the country’s 10 utilities be stripped of
regional monopolies in power generation, transmission and
distribution.
After four previous attempts at reforming Japan’s power
market “the regional utilities’ monopoly market structure is
basically unchanged,” according to a draft of recommendations
from the panel headed by Motoshige Itoh, an economics professor
at the University of Tokyo.
To contact the reporters on this story:
Chisaki Watanabe in Tokyo at
cwatanabe5@bloomberg.net;
Masumi Suga in Tokyo at
msuga@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Peter Langan at
plangan@bloomberg.net;
Reed Landberg at
landberg@bloomberg.net
