By Greentech Lead Asia: Canadian Solar, a solar module
manufacturer, will build a plant in Japan as early as fiscal 2013. The Company
said that it will be the first foreign manufacturer to produce solar panels in
the country.
The Ontario-based firm is among the domestic and overseas
companies vying to strengthen their position in the Japanese market as a new
government incentive program starting this July is expected to spur demand for
green energy.
Canadian Solar will invest several billion yen for the
new plant and expects the new plant will meet the growing demand in Japan. The
new plant is expected to produce 150 megawatts of solar panels annually. The
firm currently imports its solar
panels from China.
“It will be more efficient to produce (the solar
panels) where consumers will be using them,” said Yu Kaname, president of
Canadian Solar Japan.
The company already announced in March a separate project
to construct a 2,000-kilowatt mega solar plant in Tsu, Mie Prefecture with the
aim to launch operation by March 2013.
The company is reviewing candidate sites in Fukushima
Prefecture and other areas devastated by the March 2011 earthquake and
tsunami. Canadian Solar is also planning to initiate a training
center for solar-panel maintenance and other works at the new plant to help
boost employment in the disaster-hit region.
Canadian Solar currently has a roughly 3 percent share of
the Japanese market and aims to raise this to 10 percent in five years.
Under the government’s renewable-energy feed-in tariff
scheme, major electric utilities will be required to buy all electricity
generated in principle from solar power by companies, households and others for
42 yen ($0.52) per kilowatt-hour, including sales tax, a price almost
equivalent to that demanded by green-energy providers.
Solar and other renewable energies are drawing interest
in Japan in view of the tight electricity supply, especially as the nation is
now without nuclear power-generated electricity for the first time in 42 years
with operation of all of its 50 commercial reactors suspended.
Canadian Solar becomes first to pass PVEL’s highly stringent
certification process
Recently, Canadian Solar became the first company to
achieve the PID Certification. PID Certification is a new certification program
conducted by PV Evolution Labs (PVEL), an independent solar module test lab in
North America. The certification program gives solar module manufacturers and
project developers a deeper understanding of how products hold up against
degradation from system voltages, a common cause of reduced performance and
module failure.