Market update · Japan · Residential solar & storage
Cost savings top disaster prep in Japan solar-storage survey
An iChoosr survey of 14,478 prospective Japanese solar and battery customers found electricity-bill savings was the leading stated motivation, ahead of disaster resilience. Expiring residential feed-in tariffs strengthen the economics of self-consumption.
SolTraCo market update · · 3 min readWhat the survey found
The August iChoosr survey covered 14,478 people across 24 prefectures who had registered interest in residential solar panels or batteries between 25 February and 23 July. Asked to select one primary reason, 48% chose reducing electricity bills and 19% chose disaster resilience.
The result describes prospective customers in iChoosr’s group-purchasing programme. It should not be treated as a representative survey of every Japanese household or compared directly with surveys using different samples and questions.
The post-FIT economics
Japan’s original residential feed-in tariff contracts guarantee fixed export payments for ten years. As those contracts expire, export compensation is generally lower than retail electricity prices, increasing the incentive to store and use solar generation on site.
METI reported that about 530,000 residential installations, representing roughly 2 GW, left the FIT scheme in November and December 2019 alone. That transition continues to enlarge the group of households evaluating storage on self-consumption economics.
Resilience and grid value remain
Cost was the leading response in the new survey, but resilience remains a real use case. After Typhoon Faxai, a JPEA survey cited by METI found that 79.8% of 486 affected solar owners used their systems’ independent-operation function during outages.
Japanese utilities are also testing coordinated residential batteries for grid balancing. This adds a potential dispatch role beyond household backup and bill savings as Japan develops its virtual power plant programme.
Sources
This update is an original SolTraCo synthesis of the linked industry sources. Reported facts and commercial interpretation are kept separate. It does not contain confidential deal information and is not investment, legal or technical advice.