This special feature talks about the past and future of offshore wind power generation with Professor Teruo Ohsawa (Kobe University Graduate School of Maritime Sciences), who was the mentor of the founding members of Relatec in their graduate school days and is currently their technical advisor. In the second part, we talked about the roles that Rera Tech Inc. and universities play in offshore wind power generation.
Rera Tech Inc.’s role in the wind industry
--What do you think about the creation of Rera Tech Inc., Professor Ohsawa?
(Ohsawa I was happy when I heard from Mr. Konagaya that he was going to start a company. I was also very grateful for the opportunity. I have always had a strong desire to use my research to benefit society, but the opportunities to achieve this are limited when you are at a university. However, by establishing Relatec as a Kobe University venture company and connecting with society, I thought that various possibilities would open up.
Also, there are few people researching wind power within the university, so it's helpful to have a partner I can consult with. They act as a liaison when conducting joint research, and sometimes I ask them to do work for me. It also broadens my own perspective.
Konagaya I share the same ideas as the professor, and I feel that research is more rewarding when I can see how it will benefit society. The wind power generation field has many challenges in both research and practice, but a major issue is the lack of players. We hoped that by starting our own company, we could realize a system of industry-academia collaboration. The results obtained in the laboratory are immediately applied to practice, and on-site issues are fed back to the laboratory. Relatec would like to be the one to facilitate this smooth collaboration.
Misaki That's right. I also think that the scope of technology will continue to expand in the future, and I believe that Relatec will be of great use in this area as well.
(Ohsawa The academic background of myself and the other members of ReraTech is meteorology. We are of course interested in wind power generation, but I think the greatest feature and strength of ReraTech is that we also have an academic interest in natural phenomena themselves.
As this industry develops in the future, I think there will be an increasing number of people who want to work in wind power but don't know much about wind. At such times, those of us who have studied meteorology need to play a role in clearly explaining the properties of wind and spreading knowledge about wind to society. While maintaining an interest in weather as a natural phenomenon, I would like to use that knowledge in the development of engineered wind power generation.
-What are your expectations for Relatec, Professor Ohsawa?
(I.e. From the perspective of a university professor, I think the career paths of Relatec members are very good examples for today's students. It is a valuable experience to be able to see with one's own eyes that one of our alumni has started a business and created a company that utilizes the research content. It would be great if they could think about starting a business or working for a venture company as one of the options, and wonder if that is a path they could take in life.
What's more, there is also the option of researching wind conditions in the lab and then joining ReraTech. However, I think it takes a lot of courage to join a venture company as a new graduate... If there are people who have once entered the workforce, but then see ReraTech's activities, find them interesting, and come back, that would be wonderful in itself.
I have nothing but high expectations for Reratec (laughs), so I hope they will play an important role in supporting the wind power industry.
Konagaya At ReraTech, we would like to work with people who share our vision and have technology that can be applied to ReraTech's business. Last December, we held a seminar to introduce the wind power industry to students in the Marine and Meteorological Laboratory, and I think we were able to show that there are many different paths available to researchers in the wind power industry as a career path.
Misaki Professor Ohsawa, how do you recruit students to your lab?
(Ohsawa Meteorology labs have always been popular, and thankfully, everyone comes to the lab of their own volition. Weather is a phenomenon we experience all the time, so it may be easy to become interested in it. However, there are roughly two types of people who join the lab. There are the Misaki type, who wants to learn about meteorology and ends up applying it to wind power generation, and the Konagaya type, who is interested in environmentally friendly energy and is interested in offshore wind power generation.
When I tell my students that "Japan is a country with few natural resources and a low energy self-sufficiency rate, and if the price of oil rises, the economy stalls immediately. That's why we need to develop clean energy that we can produce domestically," they always seem interested. There's no doubt that what we're doing is research that will be necessary for future generations, so in that sense I think it's a very easy research field to explain.
We want to be an organization that can change flexibly to keep up with the times and technology.
--How do you feel looking back at Relatec's progress so far?
OhsawaI think it's a good first year result, what do you think?
KonagayaI don't have much experience as a manager yet, so it's difficult to give an accurate evaluation, but I think we've made sufficient progress as a first-year venture company. There is a shortage of technical players in the wind power industry, so there is a lot of demand and it's easy to attract attention. I think that because of this, we were able to receive work from many clients even in our first year.
Misaki The biggest thing is that we were able to ride the trend. However, it is an industry that changes rapidly, so we don't know what it will be like in five years. Even though it is an industry that is necessary for the future of Japan, will it continue to grow, or will the market calm down? We need to calmly determine that.
OhsawaTechnology is changing quickly, isn't it? The technology we're currently researching for wind forecasting and observation will probably be established in five or six years, and we'll enter the maintenance and operation phase. I think it's going to be important to figure out how to best adapt the company's policies and business operations to the state of offshore wind development.
Konagaya When we think about what kind of organization Rera Tech Inc. should be, we often talk about how "an organization that can flexibly change its shape to suit the situation is best." As needs change from moment to moment, we also need to change in response. With that in mind, we want to continue trial and error to find a system that can deliver the highest performance for each project.
(Written by Izumi Kanchiku, edited by Hisae Sasaki)