More than 50 top businesses in Japan participate

Waseda University Advanced Collaborative Research Organization for Smart Society (ACROSS) held the 2nd Energy Resource Aggregation Business Forum (ERAB Forum) on March 29.

This forum served as a place for the top management level of academia and industries to make an agreement together for promoting energy resource aggregation businesses. It was centrally instituted at Waseda last year on January 26 and welcomed 52 major businesses representing Japan (the list of participating companies is available below). Personnel from the Ministry of Economy, Trade & Industry also attended as observers.

Negawatt trading, which allows the buying and selling of saved energy, is planned to start this April. Developments to realize virtual power plants by energy resource aggregation are also expected to be carried out on full-scale.

The ERAB review meeting was held in January 2016 at the Ministry of Economy, Trade & Industry to talk about standards for trading rules between businesses related to negawatt trading and for remote control of energy devices. The ERAB Forum, now in its second time, is in line with this meeting, where activities throughout the year were introduced so that participants could discuss future prospects.

Participating businesses in alphabetical order (as of March 29, 2017)

• Electric power companies: CHUBU Electric Power Co.,Inc.; The Kansai Electric Power Company, Incorporated; KYUSHU ELECTRIC POWER CO. INC.; TEPCO Power Grid, Incorporated; TEPCO Energy Partner, Incorporated; Tohoku Electric Power Co., Inc.; Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, Inc.

• Gas companies: Osaka Gas Co., Ltd.; TOKYO GAS Co., Ltd.

• New energy companies：ENNET Corporation; Jupiter Telecommunications Co., Ltd. (J:COM); KDDI CORPORATION (au DENKI); SoftBank Corp. (SB Power)

• Aggregators: Azbil Corporation; Comverge Japan; ENERES Co., Ltd.; Energy Pool Japan KK; EnerNOC Japan, Inc.; iGrid Solutions; ITOCHU Techno-Solutions Corporation; Koyo Electric Co., Ltd.; NTT FACILITIES, INC.; NTT Smile Energy

• Electromechanics companies: 4R Energy Corporation; Ad-Sol Nissin Corporation; DAIKIN INDUSTRIES; ELIIY Power Co., Ltd.; FUJITSU LIMITED; FUJI ELECTRIC CO., LTD.; Hitachi, Ltd.; KYOCERA Corporation; MEIDENSHA CORPORATION; Mitsubishi Electric Corporation; Murata Manufacturing Co., Ltd.; NEC Corporation; NGK INSULATORS, LTD.; OMRON Corporation; OSAKI ELECTRIC CO.,LTD.; Panasonic Corporation; Sumitomo Electric Industries, Ltd.; TABUCHI ELECTRIC CO., LTD.;  TAKAOKA TOKO CO., LTD.; TOSHIBA CORPORATION; TOSHIBA MITSUBISHI-ELECTRIC INDUSTRIAL SYSTEMS CORPORATION; Yokogawa Solution Service Corporation

• Car manufacturers: NISSAN MOTOR CO.,LTD.; TOYOTA MOTOR CORPORATION

• Real estate and construction companies and developers: Mitsui Fudosan Co., Ltd.; Nomura Real Estate Holdings, Inc.; OBAYASHI CORPORATION; SEKISUI CHEMICAL CO.,LTD.; TAISEI CORPORATION

Waseda University (ACROSS)

In recent years, ICT has immersed in different areas of our daily lives and the integration of many things, starting with energy, has excelled, creating new values and services never seen before. Waseda University interprets such changes as the arrival of a “smart society,” and on July 1, 2014, it established the Advanced Collaborative Research Organization for Smart Society (ACROSS).

ACROSS is a research organization made of 7 different institutes and focuses on five research areas: smart grid, smart buildings, smart mobility, smart food and smart health support.