The new company will be named EnerNOC Japan KK, and will have an exclusive license to market EnerNOC’s DemandSMART cloud-based DR application throughout the country.
This JV will build upon successful past collaborations between the firms in Japan; most notably their joint participation in an "electricity demand supply stabilization project collaborating with BEMS aggregators" with Kansai Electric Power Company in the summer of 2012.
EnerNOC operates DR business in the USA, Australia, Canada, UK, and New Zealand, and its total curtailable DR portfolio is over 9,000 MW.
Demand response is a new smart grid business model which achieves grid stabilization and balances electricity demand and supply through incentivizing energy users to curtail their power consumption for short periods of time.
Leveraging EnerNOC’s expertise as the world’s largest DR provider, and Marubeni’s vast electricity sector experience as a global energy firm, EnerNOC Japan aims to contribute to stabilizing the balance of energy supply and demand in Japan.
In addition, collaborating with EnerNOC, Marubeni secured the award of a METI-sponsored pilot project with TEPCO, the Incentive-based Demand-Response Program, which was organized by NEPC (New Energy Promotion Council) at the third invitation of the Next-Generation Energy and Social Systems Demonstration Project (under the FY2013 budget), 22 November 2013.
This pilot project will be among the first deployments in Japan of aggregator-based quick-response DR for the commercial and industrial sector. Under the project, EnerNOC and Marubeni will build a diversified DR portfolio able to provide both peaking capacity and load balancing services to TEPCO.
The project is also expected to establish the foundation for the long-term inclusion of DR in Japan’s electricity system.