Japan was the largest solar market in the world till 2004,after which it was overtaken by Germany.The huge domestic market gave rise to Japanese companies like Sharp,Mitsubishi,Kyocera,Panasonic-Sanyo become top solar panel producers in the world.Mitsubishi the Japanese conglomerate with diversified global interests has a big presence in solar and wind energy as well.The company is known for its high quality panels and has a decent presence in USA and Japan.Mitsubishi is a part of the consortium which is looking to set up huge solar power plants in Thailand as well.But now with Japan reaffirming it commitment to renewable energy and on track to kill nuclear energy,Mitsubishi is turning its focus towards the domestic market.Mitsubishi is planning to set up a number of solar power plants in the country to take advantage of the Japan solar Feed in Tariffs which will be introduced soon
The ET Solar Group was founded in 2007.The company is relatively small compared to the biggest solar panel producers like Yingli,Suntech as its capacity is one/fifth the size of these big panel producers.It is more comparable to small Chinese solar companies like CEEG Solar,Eging and Sunlink..ET Solar is a quasi vertically integrated solar equipment manufacturer with presence in Europe, North America and Australia. ET Solar iis not fully integrated like LDK,Yinglie which makes polysilicon as well.However it does make silicon ingot, wafer, cell, module and a variety of BoS component products. ET Solar offers high-quality modules, inverter, tracker, BIPV, PV Kit and other solar products in more than 50 countries and regions in the whole world. Worldwide more than 500MW projects are already finished.The company is not publicly listed but is funded from Private Equity Sources.In these tough conditions it is questionable whether ET Solar can survive as it is not a Tier 1 producer.ET Solar has a good presence in the UK and Australian Markets.However Australian Solar Power Industry has seen a number of solar panel producers entering the industry and there are good alternatives available from Trina and Suntech