Japan sets feed-in tariffs for the 2020 Japanese Financial Year

• Feed-in tariffs (FiTs) in Japan for solar PV systems have now been provisionally set by the national Ministry of Energy Trade and Market (METI) for the next financial year, which starts in April.

The nation has been preparing to graduate the market far from the premium-level incentives that began at more than ¥& yen; 40 per kWh (US$ 0.36) in 2013, when the program was presented to kick-start the marketplace in the wake of the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011 which resulted damage to Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station.

The subsequent shuttering of almost all of Japan’& rsquo; s nuclear generation centers has left an advanced industrial economy without many natural deposits of its own extremely dependent on expensive imported fuel.

While this mainly suggests melted natural gas (LNG) - lots of tanker trucks bring the fuel are seen on Japan’& rsquo; s roads-and latterly on a reverse to coal generation which is anticipated to include a dependence on coal imported from Australia.

Nevertheless, while wind energy has actually been slow to remove and other choices such as geothermal appear a non-starter (despite plentiful resources, regional pressure indicates it is not likely this will ever be popular) solar PV generation in specific is now becoming competitive with grid electrical energy.

The most significant market vibrant shift within the solar industry is the move away from the much-vaunted ‘& lsquo; mega-solar & rsquo;, grid-scale tasks that created many-gigawatt pipelines of jobs, both completed and commissioned, along with a great deal that have gone unbuilt.

In a conference the other day with PV Tech/ Energy-Storage. news, Izumi Kaizuka, a manager at Tokyo-based solar PV market analysis and research study company RTS PV exposed and discussed the brand-new FiTs and Japan’& rsquo; s industry characteristics for solar-and progressively energy storage - for a function short article to be released in the upcoming quarterly edition of PV Tech Power (Volume 22).

Dawn of third-party ownership - 'Absolutely no Yen Setup'

Going forwards, Kaizuka said that the emphasis on rooftop solar generation, both at domestic and business and industrial (C&I) level will continue. The analyst said that the primary motorist of the roof market is self-consumption, since of the minimized level of FIT while demand for sustainable power is increasing for numerous business. Lots of service providers in the solar industry have now gotten in third-party owner designs, understood in the US as "no cash down" offers, or in Japan as "No Yen Installation" organisation designs.

Large-scale solar has quietened down as land appropriate for ground-mounted development is now at a real shortage, while designers and owners of that abovementioned unbuilt mega-solar pipeline have a deadline of March this year to make great on their feed-in tariff granted projects, Kaizuka said.

Japan’& rsquo; s feed-in tariffs (FiTs)for the 2020 Japanese Financial Year (JFY2020)

There is still to be a public hearing held next week, but it is comprehended that it is really unlikely for any modifications to occur as a result of that process.

On the other hand, domestic FiTs really began in 2009, for a 10-year contracted period. More than 500,000 of these residential tariffs have now expired, meaning that homeowners are targeting self-consumption of power with batteries, or looking to broker power purchase arrangement (PPA) agreements with the lots of new merchants that have sprung up to serve Japan’& rsquo; s decontrolled, or unbundled, electrical energy market.

It has long been planned that this next fiscal year will be the last in which FiTs are used, suggesting that Japan is looking for new methods to support the deployment of solar PV, with the federal government targeting more than 130GW by 2030.

Sign up for and check out the next concern of PV Tech Power, out towards completion of February in time for PV Expo in Tokyo, to discover more.