OVERVIEW OF PHOTOVOLTAICS IN JAPAN

Grid Connected Solar Electric System

HISTORY ON ENERGY SUPPLIES IN JAPAN:

Japan, an Island country in East Asia is in the Pacific Ocean that lies off the eastern coast of Asian mainland and stretches from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and China in the southwest. It has a population of 127 million which is the tenth largest in the world. [1]

Japans’ dependency on resources for energy supply has been fluctuating since 1950. In 1950, around 50% of the energy was extracted from the coal with very little production from Hydro (33%) and oil (17%) with no production from Natural gas and nuclear. In 1973, oil became the primary source for the energy supply with a percentage of 75.5%. Later in 1973 due to the oil shock, Japan decreased their oil dependency and by promoting alternative energy resources that were not in consideration prior, such as nuclear power and natural gas. They continue to diversify their dependency and oil was reduced from 75.5% to 40.3% in FY 1973 to FY 2010, respectively. In March 2011, the country again faced nuclear power crises because of the earthquake and the nuclear incident at their Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear power plant that resulted in the deficiency of nuclear power and to compensate the smooth running of the energy they again had to go back to the fossil fuel (oil in particular) but late in 2015 they restarted their two power plan and increase their renewable resources dependency and finally in the latest composition i.e. in FY2016 the oil source dropped to 39.7% with renewable energy expansion from 4.3% to 7%. [2]