SunPower Corporation could be well-positioned to help Japan rebuild using solar photovoltaics.

The March 11 earthquake, tsunami and resulting nuclear crisis in Japan will have broad impacts on the solar industry over the coming months and years. Solar company stock prices have risen sharply even as stocks in general slump. Analysts and laymen alike are speculating that Japan will turn to solar in rebuilding its country and its energy infrastructure.

Just days before the disaster, SunPower announced a new 48-megawatt contract with Toshiba to supply the company with solar panels for its residential solar business in Japan.

That contract was an expansion of one signed last year for 32 megawatts, said SunPower spokeswoman Ingrid Ekstrom.

She and other public relations representatives at the company declined to comment on what the company’s role may be in rebuilding Japan and supplying the country with new power generation options as it looks to replace damaged and now unpopular nuclear plants.

Ekstrom only had one nugget of news about SunPower’s relationship with Japan after the quake: “Our agreement with Toshiba remains intact,” she said.

In answer to questions prior to the earthquake, Ekstrom said SunPower’s solar panels were well-received in Japan and that Toshiba’s residential solar business was thriving, in large part, because of government support for solar.

“Japan is very supportive of residential solar deployment and has a two-fold incentive structure,” Ekstrom wrote in an e-mail. “They have a feed-in-tariff on excess generation for systems less than 10 kilowatts as well as an installation cost rebate.”

Toshiba had not been bashful about the success of its residential solar business in Japan prior to the earthquake either.

"Since we launched our residential solar business in Japan early last year, we have recorded solid achievements by implementing comprehensive sales and marketing activities, including expansion of sales channels," Takeshi Yokota, general manager of Photovoltaic Systems Division, Toshiba Corporation was quoted in a SunPower press release. "We look forward to building on this success and increasing market share in Japan by further reinforcing our partnership with SunPower."

While the company looks to continue exporting panels to Japan, it will also have to find new sources of the polysilicon it uses to build the panels.

Another press release issued by SunPower after the disaster said that the company gets about 10 percent of its polysilicon from Japan, but that it will be able to replace those supplies with polysilicon from other sources.