Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido suffered a blackout following an earthquake in early September 2018. Then grid stability failed because of the sudden imbalance between supply and demand. Now the Tokyo area utility is working with technology businesses to develop innovative virtual power plants for its stakeholders.
Combining Sources into Innovative Virtual Power Plants
First, this emerging nationwide initiative will gather energy from homes, offices, and electric cars to supplement green energy. Then the trigger will be an under-delivery situation as caused by the September earthquake.
Japan wants to have 24% renewable energy in its power mix by 2030. However, it is finding wind and solar sources temporarily volatile during extreme climate events. It plans to build a series of innovative virtual power plants to mitigate this risk factor. Moreover, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry aims to have systems capable of handling around 50 megawatts of power each by 2021.
Early Grid Storage Success from EV Batteries
Starting October, 2018, several Japanese companies worked together to test electric car batteries online. They connected them to proprietary charging stands in the public domain, in this case Nissan Leaf facilities. Their goal was to test whether they could use them to stabilize the grid.
The Japanese tests proved successful. Germany already has several innovative virtual power plants in commercial operation. These store surplus energy at night in homes, offices, and electric vehicles. They manage these scattered, small batteries over the internet. Their intention is to offer their clients lower tariffs in future.
The overall goal is to eliminate the need to load balance by using unnecessarily large amounts of spinning reserve. In time, we could find ourselves with less technical infrastructure to achieve the same result with battery storage. Thus bigger baby steps towards eliminating non-renewable fuel taken.
Related
Africa’s Micro-Grid Storage Challenge
Micro-Grid – Your Own Energy “Island”
Preview Image: Hakodate City, Hokkaido Prefecture, North Japan
Video Share Link: https://youtu.be/sKcKLJ7q750
