French battery firm Saft is moving into the Japanese market after winning a contract to supply a containerised lithium-ion energy storage system (ESS) to the country.
The ESS project – a first for Saft in Japan – will offer a nominal storage capacity of 520kWh and 1MWh peak power output on Niijima, a volcanic island in the Philippine Sea.
The microgrid project is being conducted by Takaoka Toko Co., Ltd. – a subsidiary of Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO).
The ESS includes on of Safts’ Intensium® Max 20 M Medium Power containerised Li-ion battery systems, and will operate in combination with Takaoka-Toko’s intelligent control systems.
With an experimental period of five years, this project will investigate the use of energy storage in operations such as ramp and frequency Smoothing.
The demonstration project will comprise diesel generators, solar panels and wind power installations working in various combinations to optimise the usage of renewable energy resources.
The demonstration site is currently under construction and the installation and commissioning of the Saft ESS is planned for early 2015.
The Japanese government is leading the way in the development of renewable energy in order to reduce the country’s dependency on fossil and nuclear based energy generation.
Japan has set targets to increase electricity generated from renewable sources from the current 10 percent to 13.5 percent (approximately 141 billion kWh) in 2020 and 20 percent by 2030.
Niijima is South-East from Tokyo at about two and a half-hours by jet boat, has a population of around 3,000 people.
The project is being coordinated by Saft Hong Kong Limited, which is responsible for the Asian market, in collaboration with Sumitomo Corporation – Saft’s partner in Japan for more than 25 years.