The Omaezakikou biomass power project, formerly called the Omaezaki Port biomass project, is a 75MW biomass-fired power plant under construction in the Shizuoka prefecture of Japan.

Omaezakikou Biomass Energy, a project company sponsored by four Japanese companies including Renova (38%), Chubu Electric Power (34%), Mitsubishi Electric Credit Corporation (18%) and Suzuyo Shoji (10%), is responsible to develop and operate the facility.

The partners of Omaezakikou Biomass Energy made final investment decision (FID) in November 2019 and the project broke ground with the start of civil construction works in April 2021.

Scheduled to begin commercial operations by July 2023, the Omaezakikou biomass power plant will use wood pellets and palm kernel shells as fuel. It is estimated to generate 530 million kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity a year, which will be enough to power 70,000 Japanese households.

Location and site details 

The Omaezakikou biomass power plant is located in Omaezaki and Makinohara, Shizuoka prefecture, Japan.

The plant site occupies 53,000m2 in the harbour area of the Port of Omaezaki, on the Honshu Island, 200km south-west of Japan’s capital city Tokyo.

Omaezakikou biomass power plant make-up

The Omaezakikou biomass power plant will be equipped with a 200 tonnes per hour (tph) Andritz PowerFluid circulating fluidised boiler (CFB) with flue gas cleaning system, a 74.95MW reheat steam turbine and generator from Siemens, and a 57m-high steel exhaust stack.

Other components of the plant will include an outdoor three-phase transformer and a gas insulated switchyard (GIS).

The Omaezakikou facility will be designed to combust solid biomass such as wood pellets and palm kernel shells to generate electricity with low emissions and high efficiency.

The electricity generated by the biomass power plant will be sold under the feed-in-tariff (FIT) policy to encourage renewable energy generation.

Infrastructure facilities

Other infrastructure facilities at the site will include a control building, a wastewater treatment system, a 60,000m3 tank to store wood pellets, and a 7,200m2 warehouse to store palm shells and wood chips.

Fuel supply

The Omaezakikou biomass power plant will be supplied with 250,000 tonnes per annum (tpa) of wood pellets imported from Canada.

Up to 100,000tpa of palm husks will also be imported from Malaysia and Indonesia to meet the fuel requirements of the project. 

Imported wood pellets and palm shells will be delivered at the west wharf quay of the Omaezaki Port and then transported to the plant site by road. 

Water consumption

The Omaezakikou biomass power plant will consume approximately 349 cubic metres per day (m3/day) of water for power generation and other on-site purposes.

Contractors involved

A joint venture of Toyo Engineering Corporation (TOYO) and Nippon Steel Engineering (NSE) was awarded a turnkey engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract for the Omaezakikou biomass power project in November 2019.

Siemens secured a contract from TOYO and NSE to supply the steam turbine, generator and turbine controls in December 2019, while Andritz was contracted to manufacture and supply the boiler for the plant in January 2020.

Hamon Group, a company based in Belgium, was selected to manufacture and supply an air-cooled condenser (ACC) consisting of eight modules for the biomass power plant in October 2020.