The Japan government continues to promote the use of renewable energy and lower the percentage of electricity generated from nuclear power. In July 2012, the government announced a full buy-back scheme which successfully stimulated solar installations.
Installations in the fourth quarter of 2012 alone reached over 1GW and the total 2012 installations showed an on-year increase of about 200 per cent. A new feed-in-tariff (FIT) will become effective in April 2013.
Under the new scheme, the FIT for solar PV systems under 10kW is lowered to JPY38/kWh (US$0.40/kWh) and the FIT for systems above 10kW is lowered to JPY37.8/kWh. Ahead of the cuts, the Japan market has been experiencing a surge of installations.
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