Ota city, about 80 km west of Tokyo, is the home of a new solar movement that involves 550 homes receiving free solar panels from the government.
Since Japan is struggling to produce resources and is looking for ways to avoid blackouts, installing the solar panels for free in one of the sunniest locations in Japan made perfect sense. The real benefit to the homeowners is that if the panels attached to their homes generate more electricity than they use, they can sell it back into the grid and make as much as an extra $50 per month.
Although it doesn’t look like any other cities will be getting free solar panels any time soon, Japan is planning to continue offering government subsidies for solar installation that will cover 10% of the costs in the future.
