No. 106: Japanese photovoltaic generation technology goes to Tunisia (July 19, 2010)

The Japanese government will reach an agreement with the Tunisian government to build a pilot plant of photovoltaic generation in Tunisia on July 23. It wishes to assist Japanese companies with their efforts to expand the market in foreign countries. NEDO, a government-affiliated research institute, will build a generation plant of 5 mega watts with an investment of about three billion yen. Tunisia, on its part, will build a gas complex generation plant for the integrated operation with the photovoltaic generation plant. The Japanese government wishes to start the operation next year, and build another four to five plants with yen loans. The world photovoltaic generation capacity is estimated to grow three times over the 2008 level to 20 giga watts. As the project grows in scale, support from the government grows more important because no company is big enough to implement such as big plan to expand the market for Japanese photovoltaic generation technology independently.