Tokyo outdoor mobile energy storage power supply

Tokyo Gas is also participating in the Japanese utility-scale battery energy storage system (BESS) market, signing a 20-year tolling offtake deal with Australian developer Eku Energy for a forthcoming 30MW/120MWh project.

Several megawatt-hours of residential battery storage systems, typically paired with solar PV, are being installed in Japan on a monthly basis. This is largely due to concerns about losing power at home, given the seismic activity the country is frequently subject to, as well as extreme weather events like typhoons.

Another Tokyo-headquartered utility, Tokyo Gas, also began a similar programme with residential batteries. The company markets and installs battery storage systems to households, and also has a new solutions service, branded Igniture, which controls the charging and discharging to participate in power supply-demand balancing.

Geographically, three of the projects will be built in Ibaraki Prefecture, two in Kanagawa, Chiba, and Tochigi each, and one in Tokyo, Saitama, and Gunma each. As Japan works to expand battery storage amid growing solar and wind capacity, METI also runs a similar subsidy scheme at the national level.

Compared with traditional energy storage technologies, mobile energy storage technologies have the merits of low cost and high energy conversion efficiency, can be flexibly located, and cover a large range from miniature to large systems and from high to high power density, although most of them still face challenges or technical bottlenecks.

Home battery aggregation projects from Tokyo Electric Power Co, and Tokyo Gas, two major utility companies in the Japanese capital.