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Annual overview puts Japan's PV prowess in the spotlight

In September, RTS Corp., a Japanese consultancy best known for its monthly newsletter PV Activities in Japan, published its annual overview of the Japanese market.


Detailed: A jam-packed report of Japanese PV facts.

Based on past newsletters, the report has the slightly misleading title of PV Market in Japan 2005/2006 – Current Topics & Future Prospects. While it examines what is to come, a good portion looks back at Japan's path to the 1 GW level of installed capacity.

But given the amazing level of detail in the facts presented, it's easy to see why author Osamu Ikki, president of RTS, is the foremost PV expert on the world's largest market (at least in terms of manufacturing and cumulative capacity: nowhere does Ikki mention that Japan lost its annual lead to Germany in 2004). The main service of the 206-page report with its hundreds of tables, charts, and photos is to show how seriously the Japanese government has taken the technology and its industry, something other governments would do well to study. Indeed, the best part is the meticulous section on Japan's 25 PV manufacturers. But for all the detail, one wishes Ikki would have taken the chance to interpret this goldmine of statistics on businesses, agencies, standards, and budgets rather than simply listing details.

PV Market in Japan 2005/2006 –
Current Topics & Future Prospects
Osamu Ikki
RTS Corp., 2005
206 pages
$550, printed version ($700 incl. PDF)
info@rts-pv.com