The Nippon Foundation Opens Offshore Wind Power Human Resource Training Center in Nagasaki (1)

Published on December 11, 2024
The Nippon Foundation Offshore Wind Power Human Resource Training Center
The Nippon Foundation Offshore Wind Power Human Resource Training Center opens in Ioujima Island in Nagasaki City in southwestern Japan on November 7, 2024.
The Nippon Foundation and the Nagasaki Marine Industry Cluster Promotion Association have opened Japan’s biggest facility for training engineers and technicians who will build, operate and maintain offshore wind power turbines.

The facility, known as The Nippon Foundation Offshore Wind Power Human Resource Training Center and located in Nagasaki, southwestern Japan, opened its first building on November 7 and began offering courses the following week.

It is operated by the association, an NPO comprising of some 70 local construction, engineering and machine manufacturing companies in Nagasaki Prefecture, as well as the Nagasaki prefectural government, Nagasaki University and Nagasaki Institute of Applied Science.

The two-story safety-training building is located on Ioujima Island, which is linked to the mainland by an 876-meter bridge. It will train around 1,000 offshore engineers and technicians a year who will be responsible for the construction, installation, operation and maintenance of offshore wind power generation equipment.

This number is equivalent to the number of technicians needed to maintain 500 wind turbines, generating electricity for roughly 3 million households.

Classes are taught both in English and Japanese and prepare students for work on offshore wind power facilities. The curriculum includes working at heights training and sea survival training.

Students will be able to obtain internationally recognized GWO (Global Wind Organization) certification, which is required to work on offshore wind power facilities. GWO is a nonprofit organization headquartered in Denmark that develops and certifies training standards for offshore power technicians.

The center is the largest of is kind in Japan in terms of student numbers and floor space.  

In addition to the safety training building, a technical training building is scheduled for completion by the end of fiscal 2025 or March 2026, with training programs planned in areas such as mechanical, electrical and hydraulic operations.  

In addition, an offshore tower for training crew transfer vessels (CTV) to access offshore turbines in an actual offshore location is scheduled to be installed in the ocean near Takashima Island in Nagasaki by the end of fiscal 2026. When completed, it will be the world’s first training facility for CTVs approaching offshore towers in actual ocean conditions.

(To be continued)


Demonstration of working at heights by an instructor at the safety training building of The Nippon Foundation Offshore Wind Power Human Resource Training Center
Demonstration of working at heights by an instructor at the safety training building of The Nippon Foundation Offshore Wind Power Human Resource Training Center which opens in Nagasaki City in southwestern Japan on November 7, 2024.





Demonstration of rescue and first aid training to be offered both in English and Japanese at the training center, which is required to obtain GWO (Global Wind Organization) certification.
Demonstration of rescue and first aid training to be offered both in English and Japanese at the training center, which is required to obtain GWO (Global Wind Organization) certification.
 


n image of an offshore tower for training crew transfer vessels (CTV) to access offshore turbines
An image of an offshore tower for training crew transfer vessels (CTV) to access offshore turbines, which is scheduled to be installed in the ocean near Takashima Island in Nagasaki by the end of fiscal 2026.
 
 
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The Nippon Foundation Opens Offshore Wind Power Human Resource Training Center in Nagasaki (2)

December 11, 2024
Speaking at a ceremony to open The Nippon Foundation Offshore Wind Power Human Resource Training Center in Nagasaki, southwestern Japan, on November 7, Mr. Mitsuyuki Unno, managing director of the foundation, said that Nagasaki is a hub of Japan’s marine industry with the expertise it has gained to date, and expressed his hope that it will become a “leading model for human resource training in off