Sun Village will repower the 499kWAC Tochigi City Minagawajonai Power Plant in Tochigi Prefecture and add battery storage to the solar asset, the company announced on October 27, 2026.
According to the statement, it will replace existing and add new panels, raising the power plant’s DC capacity from about 499kW to 827kW. The asset’s AC capacity will remain unchanged to use the existing grid connection. Annual generation is expected to increase by 68% from approximately 550MWh to 920MWh. Sun Village will also install a co-located 2.44MWh battery system comprising Daihen power conditioners and CATL batteries.
The project is expected to be completed in March 2027. It will be aggregated by Sun Village, which said that the asset is owned by its group company TKM LLC and has already switched from operating under the feed-in-tariff (FIT) to the feed-in-premium (FIP) scheme.
METI data shows the project was FIT-certified in FY2014, when 10kW and larger solar power plants were offered 32 yen per kWh for 20 years, and converted to FIP in February 2026. Its certified DC capacity increased from 499kW to 818kW, about 9kW below the 827kW disclosed in the statement, in July 2026. TKM LLC was renamed to SVT in May 2021, according to the National Tax Agency.
Repowering existing solar power plants at higher DC-to-AC ratios and adding battery storage might become more common as developers seek to maximize their assets’ production without the need for larger grid connections.
Such projects are also supported by a regulatory change implemented in FY2024 that allows asset owners to maintain their original FIT/FIP price for the existing capacity and only apply a new, lower rate to the expanded portion. Previously, the new price applied to the entire facility if its capacity was increased by 3kW or more or 3% or more.
