On November 4, 2020, Toshiba Energy Systems & Solutions Corporation (Toshiba ESS, Headquarters: Tokyo), a subsidiary of Toshiba, announced that it has signed an agreement with Next Kraftwerke GmbH (Headquarters: Cologne, Germany), a German operator of large-scale virtual power plants (VPP), to establish a joint venture called Next Kraftwerke Toshiba.

The joint venture aims to provide services using VPP technology for renewable energy power generation companies and aggregators. Their services will help firms to balance their electricity supply and demand, and to optimize their trading operations for improved profitability. Toshiba ESS and Next Kraftwerke will leverage their experience on power supply and demand forecasting, distributed energy resources (DER) management, and energy trading. Toshiba ESS will own 51% of the shares of the joint venture and Next Kraftwerke will own the remaining 49%. The joint venture is expected to begin operations by the end of November 2020.

The joint venture was launched ahead of Japan’s plans to apply new mechanisms to promote the implementation of renewable energy and DER. Japan is set to launch a control reserve market in April 2021 in order to efficiently utilize DER, including renewable energy and battery storage. Furthermore, Japan will make a shift from feed-in tariffs (FIT) to feed-in premiums (FIP) to make renewable energy the main generation source by April 2022. This change will require utilities to be responsible for balancing their supply and demand based on accurate power generation forecasts while mitigating market risks under fluctuating market prices. Since October 2019, Toshiba ESS and Next Kraftwerke have jointly studied the potential for VPP technology to address these challenges.

The joint venture will primarily focus on the Japanese market but will also consider overseas expansion by leveraging Toshiba ESS and Next Kraftwerke’s global operations and networks.[1] [2]

[1] https://www.toshiba-energy.com/info/info2020_1104.htm

[2] https://www.toshiba-energy.com/en/info/info2020_1104.htm