Mitsui & Co., Ltd. ("Mitsui", President and CEO: Tatsuo Yasunaga) and Kyushu Electric Power Co. Inc. (President and CEO: Kazuhiro Ikebe) will conduct a joint pilot project to form a new service to residential customers coming off FIT (feed-in tariff, a fixed price purchase of renewable energy). This pilot project uses batteries controlled and aggregated by a VPP (virtual power plant) software platform* provided by Sunverge Energy, Inc., a US-based company.
The anticipated service will lower customers' energy bills by using batteries to optimize self-consumption of rooftop solar-generated power. In addition, this pilot project will also contribute to obtaining technological understanding of aggregating residential batteries for deployment of a large-scale VPP implementation. Through this we aim to develop new businesses and services such as stabilization of power grid systems.
Going forward, electric power supply systems will transition from the current centralized large-scale generation to a smaller scale distributed energy resource deployment constructing VPP. Mitsui and Kyushu Electric Power will develop knowledge necessary to actively promote innovation that delivers new value to customers.

*Sunverge Dynamic VPP Platform

Overview of the companies involved

Kyushu Electric Power Co. Inc.

Sunverge Energy, Inc.