FIT is about to expire and Japan's home photovoltaic market will enter a new era

About 500,000 Japanese owners of home photovoltaic systems under expiring 10-year feed-in tariff (FIT) contracts may be able to find a new way to benefit from solar energy using battery storage.

As described by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), Japan introduced its surplus power purchase system in 2009 as a means of expanding Japan’s energy mix and integrating a higher share of renewable energy.

Japan has introduced a more aggressive subsidy program to promote renewable energy generation since it shut down its nuclear power facilities due to safety concerns following the Great East Japan Earthquake in March 2011 and the nuclear accident in Fukushima.

Launched in 2012, the FiT has developed mostly large-scale solar (what the Japanese industry calls “super solar”) generating capacity of billions of watts, making Japan the world’s second-largest PV market in 2013 and 2014.

However, while the 2012 FiT contract stipulated that utilities must purchase electricity from PV and other renewable energy sources over a 20-year period, the previous FiT only applied to surplus PV power that was not self-consumed at managed properties, and the contract period was only 10 years.

Kyushu Electric Power, one of Japan’s 10 major regional utilities and grid operators, announced this week that it would launch a pilot program for owners of residential PV systems to join virtual power plants (VPPs) through the use of batteries.

US manufacturer Sunverge has participated in several international VPP pilot projects before commercializing its VPP technology. The company has partnered with Kyushu Electric Power on a project where the network of home energy storage batteries the partners hope to create will be controlled by Sunverge’s dynamic VPP software platform. The project aims to create a VPP product that can be scaled up and widely used across Japan.

Back to 2016. According to news from Japanese thin-film solar company Solar Frontier, the company expects 2019 to be an important "inflection point" for home solar + energy storage in Japan, as the FIT contracts signed in 2009 are coming to an end. It is believed that about 500,000 households have signed up for the program and purchased PV systems. News from companies such as Sonnen and SolarEdge also shows that a similar scenario will occur in Germany in 2020.

(Original source: Energy Storage News New Energy Network Comprehensive)