A reduction of the feed-in tariff to ¥21/kWh (around US$0.19) for projects over 2 MW in size and approved between 2012 and 2014 will be applied starting from September 2019 and not from March, as originally planned. For approved projects with a capacity of less than 2 MW, however, no postponement has been granted.

The subsidy for solar schemes approved between 2012 and 2014, and that will be not completed by March, may be reduced to ¥21/kWh. The proposal is expected to affect projects with a combined capacity of more than 20 GW.

The RE100 Progress Insights Annual Report 2018, released at the end of last week, portrays the central role corporate policies can play in carbon mitigation efforts.

The rise of batteries will attract that headline figure in investment up to 2040, say analysts, as exponential growth in EV ownership, falling stationery system costs and the needs of the world’s grid-poor regions combine to boost lithium-ion technology.

The PV business of the Japanese corporation is again the villain, as the conglomerate’s Life and Environment Group posts the only first-half business loss among otherwise impressive figures. The solar division has issued a profit warning.

The smart battery storage supplier has launched a 35 MWh cluster in Japan. This could grow to over 100 MWh within a year, says Moixa.

Despite political hurdles in key markets including China, India and Japan, Asia remains highly active. This year, 59 GW of solar is expected to be installed and due to further system price declines, a phase-out of subsidy schemes can be offset.

The power supplier is cooperating with the University of Tokyo, Mitsubishi UFJ Bank and Unisys, testing how solar power can be traded between solar prosumers and electricity consumers, while conducting transactions using a blockchain platform.

A Japanese research team claims to have tailored an electron-accepting unit, which has been successfully used in an organic semiconductor applied in a solar cell device that showed high PV performance.

Toshiba Corporation has announced it will invest JPY 16.2 billion (around US$144 million) in a second Japanese manufacturing facility for its SCiB rechargeable lithium-ion batteries.