The residential rooftop segment is about to truly take off, just as momentum at the utility scale is starting to wind down. But it remains unclear how recently passed legislative changes will reshape the market from the start of the next fiscal year in April 2017.

Over the past two years, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) has canceled a number of projects stuck in development limbo, pushing out some of the inexperienced, would-be developers who flooded into the utility-scale market from its inception, drawn by the expectation of easy profits on the back of the government’s generous feed-in tariff (FIT).

However,