Problems in Second Year Feed-in-Tariff Policy

TV Tokyo Website

TV Tokyo aired on 4th a good report on the problematic of current FiT in Japan, which has come to the second fiscal year this April.


(Bullet-point summary)

- A real estate company installed 239 solar panels on the roof of its student apartment house.
The company plans to do the same at 6 more buildings, intending to sell electricity to power company.

- Japanese FiT policy started last year [*last July]. For the first fiscal year [*April 2012 to March 2013] the tariff was 42 JPY/kWh, which is applicable for coming 20 years. As for the FY 2013, it will be around 38.

- In last fiscal year, the total capacity of 4.7 GW solar was constructed throughout Japan.
It equals to that of five nuclear power plants.

- Let's take Miyama Goudo [*Joint] Power Plant an example. The solar plant of 23 MW scale by Shibaura Group Holdings has just started operation in late March. It is the largest working solar facility at the moment.

- Mr. Tetsumi Shinchi, chairman and executive director of Shubaura Group, calls the current FiT "first come, first profit" scheme.

- The company also made the first "mega-solar fund" in Japan, which successfully collected shares of five million JPY each for a short time. It plans to install a mega-solar facility in Nishiki town of Kumamoto prefecture. The capital will be repaied after 20 years, and the revenue from electricity sales will be shared.

- However, a big headache is the reception by power companies, Mr. Shinchi says. When someone buys a piece of land for solar project and then applies for grid connection, he or she will be said in most cases, "In this area the capacity is already full."

- This kind of connection refusal is everywhere in the country. The mega-solar constructor Fujiwara in Kamagaya city of Chiba prefecture says the connection has been problematic especially after January 2013.

- President Mr. Kimura said, "Last year the connection cost was less than a million JPY, while the power company now says 40 million in one case."

- The company concluded a contract of a lot in Narita. After that, Tokyo Electric Power Company replied the connection cost would be 40 million JPY and that there was an alternative of reducing the output to one-third. The installation plan was given up.

- In the guideline of grid connection by METI (Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry), it is prohibited to pass electric current higher than substation capacity. Also, connection cost has to be paid by the seller side.

- Mr. Kimura foretold that in one year it would become impossible to connect with the grid everywhere, it the situation didn't change.


TV Tokyo: Morning Satellite: 2013/04/04
http://www.tv-tokyo.co.jp/mv/nms/feature/post_38627