Hi everyone, this is Toshiro. Me and one of the lab mates Junchan attended Energy Storage Summit Japan (ESSJ) and VDE financial dialogue for two days. This is an international conference and expo for international company representatives, policymakers and scientists from Europe, the United States, and Japan in addition some private firms like Vattenfall,Sweden, VDE Germany, Bloomberg, in the U.S and so on. During the session, our group head Dr. Naoya Abe served the role as a chair man.
As for my impression ,although the main topic was energy storage applications,the discussion energy market deregulation action in Japan was very active during the summit.It looks like many international developers are exploring the business opportunities with regards to PV cells, and wind turbines for and in Japan. This because the subsidy for Feed-in-tariff is still in the high level and the cost of capital is significantly low in Japan. It was presented that the IRR of the project could be less than 2.5%.
When you see abroad, the case in California must be very interesting.The state aims to cut greenhouse gas emissions to 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.In order to achieve the goal , 5 million electric vehicles must penetrate in the state.And for the more diffusion of renewable energy in the future, the battery based energy storage device that are used in the electric vehicle would be connected to the grid.This enables to relieve the capacity overload in the grid.
Overall, the summit give us a profound knowledge to consider renewable projects both technical aspect and financial aspect. we engineer certainly need have both important perspectives to observe the project and that will help to actually make the project happen.
