By Cat DiStasio / Source: Inhabitat

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Japan may be lacking in real estate, since the entire country is smaller than the state of California, but that’s not stopping them from building an enormous solar farm. The Asian nation has begun work on a floating solar power farm that will generate enough electricity for 5,000 homes. Multinational electronics company Kyocera is behind the project, which boasts the designation of being the world’s biggest floating solar farm.

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We first reported on the project over a year ago, when plans were announced to aim for the world’s largest floating solar plant. Now, construction has finally begun but we can’t say Kyocera has ‘broken ground’ on the project because, well, there is no ground in this equation. The solar farm and power plant will float on a reservoir in Japan’s Chiba prefecture, southeast of Tokyo. Kyocera says the watery site was selected because Japan simply doesn’t have enough land for a utility-scale solar farm. The Yamakura dam power plant will be outfitted with 50,000 solar panels with an overall capacity of 13.7MW.

Yamakura dam power plant isn’t Japan’s (or Kyocera’s) first floating solar farm, but it will be the biggest in the country and most likely the biggest on Earth. The farm’s “floating” feature is what makes it distinctive, though. When the nearly two-million-square-foot solar power plant is complete, it won’t even break into the top 100 of the world’s solar farms by size, The Guardian points out.

Read more @ Inhabitat