Gifu Prefecture Announces Completion of Another Energy Self-Sufficient Demo Project

Japan's Gifu Prefecture unveiled on March 6, 2011, its latest project aimed at demonstrating next-generation energy infrastructure, this time in a semi-mountainous area of the prefecture.

With the goal of encouraging new industries in the energy and environment sectors, thought to have good potential for growth, Gifu launched five next-generation energy infrastructure demonstration projects that combine multiple energy sources and new energy technologies. It developed and constructed these projects, and has since been monitoring them to verify their effectiveness. So far, besides the semi-mountainous area project, Gifu has completed and opened to the public other demonstration projects involving a public facility, commercial facility, a residence, and a city-center installation.

The semi-mountainous area project is at a hundred-year-old private house in the Meiho area of the city of Gujo, which is equipped with solar power generation technology, a fuel cell, a storage battery, and a small-scale hydraulic power generator and wood-burning stove, both which utilize the river and forest resources abundantly available in the area. This type of self-contained energy supply system is the first of its kind in Japan.

Gifu will verify energy efficiency, cost performance, and the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions under real-life conditions in this house, and then publish the results. As there are many communities in the prefecture that may become isolated in the event of a natural disaster, it hopes to prove that such self-sufficient energy supply systems are effective and probably should be included as one of a number of disaster-relief preparation measures.

Four Areas in Japan Begin Own Next-Generation Energy and Social System Projects (Related JFS article)
http://www.japanfs.org/en/pages/030369.html

Posted: 2011/07/30 06:00:15 AM