Japan has made decisions on the Feed-in Tariffs (FIT) scheme for solar power for fiscal year 2017 on this year’s sixth committee for renewable energy policies. Basing on Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry’s (METI’s) plan, the FIT rates for solar electricity will be reduced to 21 yen/kWh, while large-scale projects with capacity above 2MW will be allocated through tenders starting from 2017.

METI’s sixth committee, which was held on December 13, concluded that FIT rate for residential PV systems with capacity under 10kW and without power controlling systems (PCSs) will be reduced from 31 yen/kWh in fiscal year 2016 to 28 yen/kWh in fiscal year 2017. PV systems in the same level while being installed with PCSs will be eligible to FIT rates of 31yen/kWh, down from 33 yen/kWh subsidy in fiscal year 2016.

FIT rate for non-residential PV systems with capacity above 10kW will be reduced from this year’s 24 yen/kWh to next year’s 21 yen/kWh, on the other hand.

In addition, METI officially announced to launch three rounds of solar tenders for large-scale PV projects with capacity of above 2MW, 500MW for each round and totals 1.5GW. Results from the first round will be taken as reference for FIT rates for non-residential PV projects for fiscal year 2018.

The FIT subsidizing term will be 10 years for residential projects and 20 years for non-residential projects, the same to current scheme. METI also made a distinct FIT reduction plan for residential PV systems, which schedules to reduce the rates to 26 yen /kWh in fiscal year 2018 and to 24 yen/kWh in fiscal year 2019. FIT rates for residential PV systems installed with PCSs will be eligible to rates with a 2-yen addition.

(Photo Credit: CoCreatr via Flickr shared by CC 2.0)