From Module Cleaning Robots to Flying Drones: Japan’s Growing Solar O&M Marke

Published at Renewable Energy World ---  Japan has installed almost 11 GW of photovoltaic (PV) capacity in just two years after the introduction of the feed-in tariff (FIT) program. This amount is equivalent to twice as much as the cumulative capacity installed over the two decades before the FIT. Besides over 16.5 GW of installed PV capacity, Japan has close to 70 GW of reserved PV capacity under the FIT as of July 2014.

Although the non-residential segment represents 57 percent of the existing installed capacity, it represents 96 percent of the reserved capacity. The fast-growing non-residential PV capacity makes Japan one of the hot markets for PV Operations and Maintenance (O&M) services.

Fuji Keizai Co., a research and consulting company, forecasted that the 2013 non-residential PV O&M market in Japan will almost quadruple by 2020. The research firm specifically projected that the maintenance market will grow from ¥1.5 billion in 2013 to ¥8.2 billion in 2020 and the operations market will grow from ¥16.3 billion to ¥60.4 billion.

To meet the growing O&M demand cost effectively and efficiently, Japan is turning to high-tech gadgets. See More Here