Post: Irish energy technology company GridBeyond and Irish Prime Minister meet to discuss deployment of Artificial Intelligence-based Demand Response for large industrial customers in Japan

Irish energy technology company GridBeyond and Irish Prime Minister meet to discuss deployment of Artificial Intelligence-based Demand Response for large industrial customers in Japan

Today, Ireland’s Prime Minister Micheál Martin will visit Japan to meet Prime Minister Fumio Kishida to renew collaboration agreements and further increase economic relationships between the two countries. Key among the discussions is likely to be challenges and opportunities in energy markets for island nations.

The energy market in Japan is becoming more dynamic and complex, but this is creating significant opportunities for businesses to support the grid and change how they power their operations. During his visit, Mr. Martin will meet with GridBeyond’s representative Shunsuke Amanai to discuss the global energy crisis and to share lessons learned on how island markets can best manage volatility in a high renewables’ future.

Japan’s energy system is changing due to rising levels of renewable power and ongoing electricity market reforms. The result is a growing need for flexible resources to help balance the intermittency of renewables and help match demand and supply. In addition, like many markets across the globe, Japan is currently experiencing extreme tightness of electricity supply and demand, in particular in the Tokyo area. As a result, the government has been requesting power conservation from both households and industry. While action on the demand side of the market is relatively new in the Japanese market, this is a mature and proven industry in Ireland and the UK with C&I businesses able to gain revenues and make significant cost savings, provided they have the right technology in place.

Using artificial intelligence and data science, GridBeyond’s solution enables businesses to participate in grid services and wholesale markets using their energy generation, storage and industrial load. By combining solvers, market access, and automatic trading in one place GridBeyond empowers C&I businesses, EV fleet operators, generators, and energy storage operators to maximise revenues and savings.

GridBeyond, the world’s leading technology player for energy optimization and aggregation of distributed and flexible energy resources, started activities in the Japanese market nearly a year ago. Last year, the company signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Chiyoda Corporation to roll out flexibility solutions for the Japanese electricity market and it is currently getting ready to open an office in the country later this year.

GridBeyond’s experience and technical expertise allows it to identify value opportunities in each industry sector and provide the current services available in Japan including participation in the Capacity Market, Balancing Market and Wholesale Market. Using its experience from international markets (including the UK, Ireland, the USA and Australia) in providing fast frequency response services GridBeyond offers businesses a future-proof solution enabling participation in Japan’s fast frequency response programme when its available.

Michael Phelan, GridBeyond’s CEO commented:

“Japan has a strong sustainable focus and aims to become carbon neutral by 2050. As renewable energies, energy storage, decentralised solar PV and EV mobility become more present in the energy landscape, services as the Demand Side Response become critical to support business and the grid operators to balance supply and demand of power, increase resilience and enable further integration of renewables into the energy mix.”