Thai Solar Energy kicks off 300MW plan with Japan projects

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  Solar development in Thailand. Image: Conergy.

Thai Solar Energy, a power producer which counts the Thai government among its clients, will build its first projects outside Thailand, beginning with three PV plants totalling 25MW in Japan.

The company said today that it plans to build 100MW of “overseas” plants by the end of 2016, and 300MW within three years of starting out. The first projects to be built should be completed “early next year”, Thai Solar Energy said.

Large-scale solar in Japan has seen something of a stumble in the past half-year or so, with grid connection issues and consumer electricity price pressure resulting in several reviews and reductions of the feed-in tariff (FiT) and a halt to the approval of new ‘megasolar’ projects. This means that with the exception of permission being granted for large PV plants to be built on specific types of underutilised sites, such as landfill, unusable agricultural land and evenabandoned golf courses, it is the backlog of already-approved PV projects that will sustain the downstream sector of the country’s PV market for some time.  

Despite this cooling of the market for new developments, analyst Hiroshi Matsukawa of Tokyo-based RTS PV has estimated that around 50GW of approved large-scale projects remain unbuilt. The rules have become a little more complicated since the last review of the FiT policy, however, with project developers being gently discouraged from selling on ownership rights to projects for profit and investors dissuaded from trying to buy into the upside of the more lucrative projects approved at the highest rates of the FiT, which was introduced in July 2012 and has subsequently been lowered by 10% or more each year. Developers with already approved projects are not allowed to change their module supplier from those registered with authorities when the initial application was submitted.

It is not immediately apparent which year’s FiT rate the Japanese solar farms Thai Solar Energy will build have been approved at, but the company said it expected to generate around THB300 million (US$8.9 million) in annual revenue once the 300MW of projects are completed.

The company did reveal that it will invest around THB2.5 billion (US$74 million) into the Japan projects, for which construction will begin later this year. Partnering with two Japanese companies, Eco Solar Japan and Prospec Holdings, Thai Solar Energy will build a 13MW plant in Aomori City, to the north of Honshu, Japan’s main island with the former. Meanwhile, the deal with Prospec will see two projects totalling 12MW built in Ibaraki City on the Kanto Plain about 120km from Tokyo. Partnering with local firms is considered essential to success in many of Japan’s major industries, with solar no exception.

Thai Solar Energy’s chairwoman and CEO, Dr Cathleen Maleenont, said that through a Singapore-based subsidiary, TSE Group International Pte Ltd, the company seeks to expand its footprint throughout Asia.