ENERES Co., Ltd

ENERES was selected for the “FY2023 Renewable Energy Aggregation Demonstration Project” conducted by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) (executive body / lead organization: Sustainable Open Innovation Initiative). Marking the final year of demonstrations toward commercializing renewable energy (RE) aggregation, ENERES will advance concrete preparations for commercial implementation together with 10 partner companies.

As efforts continue toward achieving carbon neutrality by 2050, the adoption of renewable energy is steadily expanding. However, because renewable power generation is highly dependent on weather conditions, there is an urgent need to establish mechanisms to address this challenge.

RE aggregation is a mechanism where aggregators bundle and manage RE power plants to eliminate imbalances between planned and actual power generation. Effectively using market transactions to address such surpluses and shortfalls in generation may also create new revenue opportunities.

Since FY2020, ENERES has conducted demonstrations to establish RE aggregation technology, focusing on mitigating imbalance risks by forming power generation balancing groups, improving generation forecasting accuracy, and developing/verifying technologies to maximize revenue. ENERES has also identified technical and institutional issues toward commercialization.

This fiscal year, ENERES will further advance past initiatives by examining RE aggregation operations with actual business applications in mind, while aiming to build systems for monetization.

Specifically, based on previous findings that forecasting accuracy improves closer to actual supply and demand, ENERES will verify the effectiveness and profitability of using real-time forecasts (forecasts made two hours before the actual supply and demand period)  as a basis for intraday market trading and storage battery charging/discharging to close the gap between forecast and actual values, thereby avoiding imbalances.

In addition, because many photovoltaic (PV) power generation forecasting models rely on solar radiation, when snow accumulates on solar panels, forecasts can deviate significantly from actual generation. To address this issue, ENERES will work to develop a PV generation forecasting model that accounts for the effects of snow cover.

As a member of the KDDI Group, ENERES aims to build a new power system that contributes to achieving carbon neutrality through its renewable energy aggregation initiatives.