ITOCHU Corporation is pleased to announce that ITOCHU and ITOCHU PROPERTY DEVELOPMENT, Ltd. will install photovoltaic panels, a storage battery system for stationary applications and light-emitting diodes in an apartment building in Setagaya-ku, Tokyo, to develop an efficient system for “local production for local consumption” of clean energy. The new system will supply nearly all the electricity used for the lighting in the common area with photovoltaic energy.

The apartment building is called Klevia Futagotamagawa and is a five-story building with a total of 51 apartments. Sales of the apartments will commence from January 2010 and residents will begin to move in from March 2011.

This industry-first attempt to install a battery storage system in an apartment building will not only allow electricity being generated in a photovoltaic system to supply the power consumption of the common area of the condominium apartment during the day but also enable the surplus to be stored to meet power consumption needs in the common area at night. Moreover, using an LED with low power consumption for the lighting will reduce the annual power consumption of the common area from approx. 36,900kWh to approx. 10,000kwh, nearly all of which will be provided by clean energy. When converted into CO2 volume, emissions will be cut by around 20.5 tons*1. Residents of the apartments will also benefit, as the administrative maintenance fee, to be about 1,200 yen per apartment, will be reduced as a result of the lower power consumption in the common area. A car sharing service involving electric cars will also be introduced to the building.

For the complex system of photovoltaic panels and storage batteries for stationary applications to be adopted for this attempt, ITOCHU will benefit from the system based on EnerDel storage batteries developed in the “Joint Demonstration Project on Low Carbon Transportation System Using Clean Energy,” announced by the company on November 27, 2009, and perform remote monitoring of the storage batteries. The project will monitor the amount of charge from photovoltaic panels to storage batteries, the consumption of storage batteries for the common area of the building, and the degradation data of batteries in real time, to further improve system performance.

ITOCHU is currently building a business model for the secondary use of an in-car lithium-ion battery system. The key to secondary use is to guarantee the reliability of batteries by creating a record of history and handling. Through the development and operation of the system and data acquisition in the Joint Demonstration Project taking place in Tsukuba, as well as this installation of a storage battery system in an apartment building, ITOCHU will establish the basis from which it can give specific shape to the secondary use model. Going forward, the Company aims to introduce the secondary use system to 20% of new apartment buildings on the market.