Orsted partnership to bid for Japan offshore wind

OSLO (Reuters) -Denmark's Orsted said on Wednesday it will bid for licences to develop offshore wind power projects in Japan's Akita Prefecture in a newly formed partnership with Japan Wind Development (JWD) and Eurus Energy.

"As a strategic market for Orsted, Japan has great potential and optimal conditions to develop offshore wind," the company's Asia-Pacific chief Matthias Bausenwein said in a statement.

Orsted is the world's largest offshore wind farm developer while Eurus has decades of experience in building onshore wind energy in Japan and JWD brings close knowledge of the Japanese power market as well as onshore wind.

"The consortium is fully prepared to participate in Japan's upcoming offshore wind auction round which closes on 27 May," Orsted said.

If successful, the plan is to construct turbines that are fixed to the seabed at two offshore sites.

For the largest of the two, known as Yurihonjo, authorities have set aside electricity grid capacity for 730 megawatts (MW) of power, while at the smaller one, called Noshiro/Mitane/Oga, the grid capacity is 415 MW, an Orsted spokesman said.

"The exact size of the projects will be determined later," the spokesman added.

Orsted declined to comment on the size of the potential investments.

(Reporting by Terje Solsvik; editing by Jason Neely)