It looks like Kansai Electric Power Co., the second largest electricity utility company in Japan, has decided to partner up with power Ledger to work on a trial run of a possible renewable energy trade-off in Japan. The main purpose of this trial run is to ensure that communities have access to cheaper energy option that will be more cost-effective than the current ones in use. Moreover, customers that generate renewable energy could be able to sell off their excess energy through a peer-to-peer system.
More about this project
The reason why KEPCO decided to support this project is so that they can help develop Virtual Power Plants, through which small-time consumers that generate renewable energy can sell it to support the local demand.
The main participants of this trial run will be 10 house participants that will all be located in Osaka City in Japan. Where does Power Ledger come into play? Well, it will allow KEPCO the access to their trading platform so that it will be easier to monitor the energy exchange between the participants.
David Martin, the managing director and also co-founder of Power Ledger, stated that he is more than happy to see a company that is large and very well established take an interest into this project, mainly testing it out in an important city such as Osaka. It shows that big companies are finally accepting the fact that change in this industry is bound to happen.
This is also quite logical since when an energy company decides to make a change, the people that rely on it automatically trust them to make the best decision so it is vital that the process is looked at carefully. Last but not least, by partnering up with this project big companies can finally learn to trust these types of peer-to-peer tradings.
