While Germany and Italy may reduce feed-in tariffs for grid-connected photovoltaic (PV) power generation, Japan will bring into force its rates in January 2010, and thus Japan stands a chance of becoming the largest PV market around the world, according to Taiwan-based PV product makers.
The Japan government has also hiked subsidies for households' installing PV systems, the sources pointed out. Due to the favorable situation, the demand for PV products in the Japan market has significantly increasing since the third quarter of 2009, the sources indicated.
Japan's total capacity for newly installed PV systems is estimated to increase from 400MWp in 2009 to 1.0GWp in 2010, and the cumulative total installation capacity will rapidly hike from 1.6GWp currently to a 2020 target of 28.0GWp, the sources indicated.
Article translated by Adam Hwang
