Japan

Workers have returned to the nuclear plant after Tokyo Electric Power Company briefly withdrew them from the site due to a rise in radiation levels.

General Electric is ready to assist Japan in tackling nuclear crisis, following three explosions at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

South Korea will provide  LNG to Japanese power companies that turned off nuclear power plants due to the earthquake.

A hydrogen blast hit the Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant’s No. 4 reactor, bringing the number of the complex's damaged reactors possibly to four. It has a total of six reactors.

Japan has declared a nuclear emergency after the operator of Fukushima No.1 nuclear plant reported an abnormality today, following a major earthquake.

SunPower will supply Toshiba with 48MW of its solar panels over the coming Japanese fiscal year.

Japan wants its power sector to buy electricity from more renewable energy sources in a feed-in tariff incentive scheme starting April 2012.

Mitsubishi Electric has started establishing the Smart Community Project Group.

Japan's Showa Shell unit, Solar Frontier has begun commercial production at its third solar cell plant in southwestern Japan.

Kyocera will supply 3MW of its multicrystalline silicon solar modules for two of Tohoku Electric Power’s plants in central Japan.

Sanyo aims to increase the annual sales amount of its energy saving products in China from the current US$36.5 million to US$146 million by 2015.

Kyushu Electric Power registered total electricity sales volume of 6,843 million kWh for December 2010. It is up 3.1% from December 2009.

GE and Fuji Electric will design, build, market and service a new generation of electric meters, supporting Japan’s advancement to a smart grid infrastructure.

Kyocera was chosen to install more than 1,200 PV systems in schools across Japan.

Japan is considering cutting the rate that utilities pay for surplus solar power by 12.5 per cent in April, according to financial newspaper Nikkei. The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry plans to lower the feed-in tariff from the current rate of US$0.584 per kilowatt to US$0.511 per kilowatt.

The PV industry’s latest innovation in cell design owes as much to Mother Nature as it does to time spent in any laboratory. And it is the water-repellent, antireflective coating of a moth’s eye that has provided the inspiration behind this latest advance in thin-film technology.