Under the partnership, AutoGrid will supply Japanese energy services and trading company ENERES with VPP and customer engagement software to aggregate, dispatch and market energy from demand response and distributed energy resources .
The partnership will enable ENERES to combine DR resources into large enough blocks of energy to sell into capacity markets. The first phase of the project begins later this year and will result in a large, dispatchable DR portfolio.
A second phase will enable ENERES to deploy a full-scale VPP to aggregate behind-the-meter DERs, including solar photovoltaic panels, energy storage systems, combined heat and power (CHP) units, and electric vehicle batteries, along with DR. Using the AutoGrid Flex™ platform, ENERES will pool DERs from its customers into a dispatchable virtual resource to participate in Japanese wholesale energy and capacity markets.
“As solar and storage costs continue to decline and new capacity markets open, DER and DR resources are becoming a key component of our daily operations,” said Masahiro Kobayashi, President of ENERES. “AutoGrid Flex gives us a proven, AI-driven comprehensive distributed energy management solution that allows us to fully leverage our own DER and DR resources and those of our customers in real time.”
AutoGrid will supply a custom-branded, cloud-based software solution that will allow ENERES to manage all aspects of the VPP, including program configuration, customer enrollment, monitoring and forecasting, event dispatch, event notifications, and measurement and verification. ENERES will use the AutoGrid Flex™ platform for AI-driven DER management, and it will use AutoGrid Engage™ to support customer marketing, signup and participation.
“Japan is in the midst of a massive market transformation that requires much greater supplies of flexible energy,” said Dr. Amit Narayan, Chief Executive Officer of AutoGrid. “We’re excited to team with ENERES to provide a scalable platform to meet this critical challenge.”
