Solar Panels In Japan  

TreeHugger reports the Japanese government is offering new incentives for builders to include solar panels in new buildings - Japan To Subsidize Solar Panels For Your House.

80 percent of newly-built homes will be equipped with solar power systems by 2030? Sounds good to me. Japan plans to provide a subsidy of about 200,000 yen (just under $2,000) to households that buy a solar power system to promote its use and help reduce greenhouse gas emissions, according to the Nikkei. The subsidy represents 10 percent of the cost of a standard solar power system, which is about 2 million yen:

The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry hopes the subsidy will help stimulate mass production of such solar power systems and lower costs. The subsidy payment could be introduced as early as the current fiscal year to end March 2009, it said. Home-use solar power systems in Japan now generate a combined total of 1.4 million kilowatts of electricity, the daily said.

In June, the government set a target of boosting solar power generation by 10 times from current levels by 2020 and 40 times by 2030. ...

Last month, AIST announed its new flexible CIGS Photovoltaic Cell with an energy conversion efficiency of 17.7%, noting that the growing concerns about environmental problems and increasing crude oil prices has led to an increased interest in power generation using renewable energy such as photovoltaics and other new energy resources.

The New York Times reports that new PV panel owners best beware, as they are becoming increasingly popular with thieves as well - Solar Panels Are Vanishing, Only to Reappear on the Internet. If your solar panel was a blogject it would be quite handy to have it report its new location when it makes its way onto someone else's roof via eBay...

Solar power, with its promise of emissions-free renewable energy, boasts a growing number of fans. Some of them, it turns out, are thieves. ...

Police departments in California — the biggest market for solar power, with more than 33,000 installations — are seeing a rash of such burglaries, though nobody compiles overall statistics.

Investigators do not believe the thieves are acting out of concern for their carbon footprints. Rather, authorities assume that many panels make their way to unwitting homeowners, sometimes via the Internet.

Last November, someone tried to sell solar panels stolen from a toll road in Newport Beach for $100 each on eBay. Detectives from the local police department entered the bidding and won the panels, which were worth nearly $1,500 apiece, according to Sgt. Evan Sailor, a Newport Beach police spokesman.