Two enormous floating solar power plants have just opened in Japan

[NickB79]

3. And the cost to build this to power these 1,000 homes is?

It's not readily apparent in the article how much this installation cost. That is a very vital piece of information that no one seems to want to discuss in any of the articles linked.

And in the meantime, Japan is embarking on a coal-burning construction boom that dwarfs this 2.9MW installation: http://instituteforenergyresearch.org/analysis/as-u-s-shutters-coal-plants-china-and-japan-are-building-them/

According to a Japanese environmental group, the Kiko Network, there are 43 coal-fired power projects under construction or planned to be built to replace the loss of nuclear power capacity shuttered due to the accident at the Fukushima nuclear plant.

If you conservatively estimate that each plant "only" averages 700 MW (though most coal-fired plants go far larger than this), you're looking at something along the lines of 30,000 MW of coal.

They're gonna need more solar panel islands.......