How Does The California Solar Initiative Compare To Japan's FIT?

Published at Solar Industry Magazine --- Both the California Solar Initiative (CSI) and Japan's solar feed-in-tariff (FIT) program have been widely praised as successful models for incentivizing solar installations. Comparing and contrasting the two markets that have resulted can provide useful information for solar professionals both inside and outside of California and Japan.

Overall, the Japanese residential program is larger in scale, but the CSI is growing faster with less incentive.

Many research companies are projecting that the Japanese PV market will be the next big market this year, fueled by the national FIT program launched less than one year ago. According to the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, between July 2012 and January 2013, over 6.7 GW worth of PV projects - mostly large non-residential systems - were approved under the FIT program and 47% of the 6.7 GW represents systems larger than 1 MW.... Read More