Marking its entrance into the Japanese battery market, and gearing up to take advantage of the growing self-consumption opportunities in the country, London-based Moixa Energy Holdings Ltd has entered into a partnership with one of Japan’s largest trading houses.
Under the exclusive marketing deal, Itochu has said it will install Moixa’s GridShare platform as a standard, on its products by this summer. Overall, Itochu also aims to sell more than 6,000 units of its “Smart star” home battery systems, which were developed in cooperation with the NF Corporation, by the end of this March.
AI technology
Under the GridShare aggregation platform, Moixa uses AI technology to trade excess power stored in smart batteries owned by partners in the GridShare scheme, with the National Grid. This helps to reduce the load on grids during peak demand, to create a flat grid.
The partners receive a share of the profits in return, the amount of which depends on whether the partner has a fixed income or profit share membership.
“The technology will save customers money by using artificial intelligence to optimise the performance of their battery based on their patterns of behaviour, the weather conditions and market prices,” said Moixa in a statement released.
Expansion
In addition to the distribution partnership, Itochu has said it will invest £5 million (around US$7.1 million) in Moixa to support international expansion.
This follows on from an investment of £500,000 by Japan’s Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings (TEPCO) last April. Overall, the company raised around £3.5 million in 2017. It is specifically eyeing the European and U.S. markets for expansion.
“Moixa will now seek to expand its GridShare partnerships with Japanese utilities and electric vehicle manufacturers and to market services to electricity networks. It is also planning trials in the US and Europe this year,” read the statement.
In the U.K., the company has already installed nearly 1,000 battery systems. It further holds patents in the U.K., U.S. and Australia on distributed smart battery systems, and aggregating batteries for grid services.
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