Foreign investment in Japan's solar industry has been relatively slow on the uptake in recent years, but a deal agreed by Sonnedix could pave the way for more non-domestic developers to enter the market.
The solar developer announced this week that it has closed financing for the construction of two solar PV plants in Japan's Yamanashi Prefecture. Although their collective size is relatively small just 4.5 MW the deal could signal the winds of change for Japan's solar sector, which has boomed largely as result of insular, domestic investment.
Sonnedix has secured financing for its project from Hitachi Capital Corporation under a lease structure, and Hitachi Systems will construct and operate the two solar plants.
Once connected, both projects will benefit from Japans attractive feed-in tariff (FIT), which has helped solar blossom in Japan since its introduction two years ago.
"We are delighted with this significant first milestone reached by our local management partner, Nippon Solar services, and have been fortunate to have been working with the professional and collaborative teams at Hitachi Capital and Hitachi Systems," said Andreas Mustad, Sonnedix's CEO.
Sonnedix's global PV portfolio currently amounts to just over 100 MW. The company has solar projects in many European countries, as well as Puerto Rico, Thailand, Chile and South Africa. Its pipeline amounts to several hundred MW.
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.
Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.
You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.
Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.