I’m always amazed at how Bloom Energy just keeps creeping along, raising more capital from what seems like a bottomless bucket of money, and scoring small but high profile contracts one at a time. The company has raised over a billion in capital, which also means that if it doesn’t make it, it’ll be one of the top VC backed failures in history.

But the most recent good news is that like all other alternative energy players right now, it’s going after the Japanese market. Post-Fukushima Japan is on a tear, looking at all sorts of alternative energy. Many analysts are saying that it may prove to be the biggest solar market in 2013.

So it’s good news for Bloom that it’s done its first fuel cell installation outside of the U.S. at a building in Fukuoka, owned by Japanese telco leader Softbank. Bloom actually has a joint venture with Softbank to introduce Bloom’s fuel cells to the Japanese market so the installation sounds a bit like an act of good faith. Also, Japan has some of the highest natural gas prices in the world so I always have wondered how that impacts the cost of running Bloom’s fuel cells in Japan, but perhaps when compared to the exorbitantly high prices the Japanese pay for power, Bloom just might still be competitive.