ENERES agrees to install a major virtual power plant to overcome electricity demand
AutoGrid, the leader in flexibility management software for the energy industry, announces its largest storage-virtual power plant (VPP) in the world by asset volume. The project aims to set up in Japan anticipates adding more than 10,000 assets to the VPP between 2020-2021 and continue scaling in subsequent years.
Headquartered in California, AutoGrid under partnership with ENERES Co., Ltd., a Japanese energy services and trading company focuses to supply with VPP and customer engagement software to aggregate, dispatch and market energy from demand response (DR) and distributed energy resources (DERs).
Dr. Amit Narayan, Chief Executive Officer of AutoGrid, said, “Japan is in the midst of a massive market transformation that requires much greater supplies of flexible energy.” “We’re excited to team with ENERES to provide a scalable platform to meet this critical challenge,” he added.
ENERES sights acceleration in electricity market
Since 2016, the largest traditional utilities have lost nearly 6 million retail power customers and projecting declines of between 2-5% of power sales in 2018/19, causing loss.
- The first phase will enable ENERES to combine DR resources into large enough blocks of energy to sell into potential markets, projected to begin later this year that result in a large, dispatchable DR portfolio.
- The second phase will enable ENERES to deploy a full-scale VPP to aggregate behind-the-meter DERs. The project will include solar photovoltaic panels, energy storage systems, combined heat and power (CHP) units, and electric vehicle batteries, along with DR.
- ENERES using the AutoGrid FlexTM platform can pool DERs from its customers into a dispatchable virtual resource. This further enables ENERES to participate in Japanese wholesale energy and capacity markets.
- AutoGrid will offer a custom-branded, cloud-based software solution that will permit ENERES to manage all aspects of the VPP, as well asprogram configuration, customer enrolment, monitoring and forecasting, event dispatch, event notifications, and measurement and verification (M&V).
- The agreement reflects AutoGrid’s strategic intent to grow its presence in Japan and other international markets.
Masahiro Kobayashi, President & Representative Director of ENERES, said, “As solar and storage costs continue to decline and new capacity markets open, DER and DR resources are becoming a key component of our daily operations.” “AutoGrid Flex gives us a proven, AI-driven comprehensive distributed energy management solution that allows us to fully leverage our own DER and DR resources and those of our customers in real time,” he added.
