Softbank Energy and Kyocera, two major names in Japan’s solar energy industry, are partnering with utilities, grid operators and other stakeholders to execute virtual power plant (VPP) projects backed by the government.
Kyocera, historically a maker of ceramics headquartered in Japan’s historic old capital city Kyoto and now known for electronics products including printers and solar PV equipment, is also a vertically integrated solar energy solution provider. As well as supplying components and developing PV power plants, the company also sells its own branded home solar kits and battery energy storage.
The company confirmed last week that it is continuing to participate in trials and development activities for virtual power plant (VPP) projects under the government’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry’s (METI) SII (Sustainable open Innovation Initiative), which is just opening up this summer to sign up public customers.
The overall VPP SII project looks at areas of VPP promotion including business models, technical demonstrations and public engagement. It encompasses distributed energy resources including vehicle-to-grid (V2G), air-conditioning units and EV chargers as well as solar PV and batteries in customers’ houses. While still somewhat loosely defined, virtual power plants (VPPs) essentially aggregate together the energy and power capabilities of large numbers of connected distributed resources, mainly solar-plus-storage in residential or business premises and deliver dispatchable power and grid services with the energy stored, generated, monitored and controlled by those devices.
The current phase of the SII, following on from initial activity in 2014, looks at three prefectures of Japan and will run until February next year. Two of Japan’s main utilities, which are also operators of the national grid network, Kansai Electric Power and Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), are involved as well as energy management company ENERES and national telecoms provider KDDI.
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