Smart battery business signs deal to supply in Japan
Business supported by Innovate UK enters strategic partnership with leading Japanese company and attracts £5 million investment to fund international growth.
The Moixa team.
Moixa, a leading smart home battery business, is to launch its GridShare platform in Japan after signing a strategic partnership with Fortune 500 company ITOCHU Corporation.
Bringing GridShare to Japan
GridShare trades power stored in home smart batteries with national power grids and allows battery owners to make money from excess energy either stored from the grid or gained from solar panels.
It uses artificial intelligence to optimise battery performance based on patterns of behaviour, weather conditions and market prices. GridShare can also manage large numbers of devices to support solar generation, control electric vehicle charging and deliver services to the electricity grid.
It will be installed in all of ITOCHU’s Smart Star home batteries from the summer of 2018. Moixa and ITOCHU forecast that the number of energy storage systems in Japan will increase from 125,000 in 2016 to more than 500,000 in 2020.
The deal also sees ITOCHU invest £5 million in Moixa to help it fund international expansion.
Partnership is real opportunity to expand
Simon Daniel, Chief Executive of Moixa, said:
ITOCHU is a major player in the global battery market and this partnership provides a real opportunity for us to expand our business in Japan and provide GridShare technology to many global battery companies.
Moixa is looking to expand its GridShare partnerships with Japanese utilities and electric vehicle manufacturers and is also planning trials in the US and Europe.
Its own smart battery has been installed in 1,000 homes in the UK, and the company has delivered more than £6 million of projects for councils, housing associations, energy utilities and network operators.
Koji Hasegawa, General Manager of Industrial Chemicals Department at ITOCHU, said:
Moixa has pioneered battery management, and we are proud to be investing and working together to target the rapidly growing energy storage market in Japan.
Moixa’s GridShare will help our customers get more value for their home batteries and will offer solutions to help our partners manage Japan’s low-carbon transition.
Technologies developed with funding support
Moixa has developed its technologies through a number of innovate-UK supported projects over the last 7 years.
These have included research and development into localised energy systems and low-cost storage of renewable energy, and studies into the feasibility of smart power systems.