With the solar installation reaching 200 MW, the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) of Japan recently issued new guidelines for the development and construction of ground-based agrivoltaics facilities, and excludes facilities that do not grow crops or livestock during the planning stage to increase Such projects exist in this land-scarce country.
Due to building regulations, the height of agrivoltaics projects must not exceed 9 meters. Therefore, projects that use trackers or facilities installed in barns and gardening greenhouses have been excluded from the guidelines.
Existing solar power plants that introduce crop growth or livestock after the project planning and construction phase may not necessarily be considered as agrivoltaics power plants. The difference between this type of solar power plant and a project considered as an
agrivoltaics facility is whether the plant is planned from the design stage to achieve the best agricultural production. In addition, in the case of
agrivoltaics power generation, the land The type is regarded as farmland, so there are related tax incentives. Most of the
agrivoltaics power plants in Japan are built under the country's feed-in tariff plan.
According to recent statistics from the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, as of the end of September, Japan has 200MW grid-connected
agrivoltaics projects in operation. These projects cover a total area of about 181.6 hectares, spread all over the country.
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grivoltaics projects are deployed on farmland, so there is no tax issue, and even in urban areas, the land can be used very cheaply. Therefore, the rapid growth of solar power plants under the national feed-in tariff will gradually be replaced by agricultural photovoltaics.
The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) recently identified land scarcity and grid congestion as the two main reasons behind the limited success of six solar auctions in Japan. IRENA also pointed out the high cost of
solar photovoltaic brackets in the Japanese market. It said that in addition to high land costs and grid congestion, it is particularly difficult to obtain permits for solar parks with a scale of more than 40 MW in Japan because of the lengthy approval process.