How will our £5m investment benefit your Smart Battery?
Our new £5 million investment and strategic partnership with one of Japan’s leading Fortune 500 trading houses ITOCHU Corporation unveiled today confirms the unique, innovative and cutting-edge nature of our Home Smart Battery.
ITOCHU will install our battery aggregation platform GridShare as standard alongside customers’ solar PV and battery storage products by this summer. The technology will manage large fleets of devices to support solar generation, control vehicle charging and help the grid balance supply and demand. In other words, it will help their batteries to learn smart behaviour while using artificial intelligence (AI).
How does this benefit are UK customers?
Our first pioneering UK customers began piloting our Smart Battery in 2010. Since then, we have installed the technology in nearly 1,000 UK homes with a combined nine million hours of operation. This investment and funding from ITOCHU will further benefit our UK customers by enabling us to make our batteries even smarter and roll-out AI technology, which will optimise our customers’ battery performance based on behaviour patterns, weather conditions and market prices.
Our UK customers will also continue to have the opportunity of participating in the GridShare cashback scheme – our solution that uses spare battery capacity to support a low-carbon, cost effective and smart electricity system through AI learning – earning them £50 a year, without lifting a finger!
Why Japan?
Japan is a world-leading energy innovation market. The country has more than 125,000 energy storage systems, which Moixa and ITOCHU forecast will exceed half a million by 2020. It also boasts the world’s third largest fleet of electric vehicles and the fourth biggest solar market in the world with 11GW generated by home solar PV systems. Working alongside ITOCHU, Moixa will be using its AI based GridShare platform to amalgamate some of these batteries into an interconnected smart grid.
And ITOCHU is a leading innovator in Japan. Currently ranked 215th in the Fortune 500, it has previously invested in other leading British companies, such as the designer fashion label Paul Smith and car service and repair company Kwik Fit.
Many Japanese manufacturers are offering battery storage for solar PV with attractive credit packages. They not only allow consumers to use more of the energy they generate, but also provide back-up power in a country prone to earthquakes and typhoons. Now, GridShare is offering these consumers extra saving opportunities. These added benefits will help compensate for expiring feed-in-tariffs, which are only available for 10 years and will begin running out next year.
Today’s announcement further strengthens our relationship with Japan, following investment last year from the country’s largest utility, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) and a partnership with Hitachi to develop a smart energy grid on the Isles of Scilly. This £10.8 million project is laying the foundations for the islands to cut electricity bills by 40% and boost renewables by 40%.
GridShare and AI
Simon Daniel, CEO of Moixa, said: “GridShare optimises the performance of home batteries by learning patterns of household energy use and solar generation, and adjusting to local weather and energy price signals. It can also help customers make more money by using their spare battery capacity to provide services that help utilities and electricity networks balance supply and demand.”
This announcement also reflects a growing trend towards the use of AI and optimisation algorithms in the energy system to identify energy and cost savings. Google, for example, has achieved 15% energy savings in its data centres.
Learn how you can harness GridShare to boost your energy savings here.
To get a quote, fill in our form, phone us on +44 (0) 207 734 1511 or email enquiries@moixa.com.