ITOCHU Corporation (headquartered in Minato-ku, Tokyo; President & CEO: Masahiro Okafuji; hereinafter ITOCHU) is joining with SHIZUOKA GAS Co., Ltd. (headquartered in Shizuoka-shi, Shizuoka; President: Seigo Iwasaki) to build a “local production for local consumption” model of clean energy by installing a lithium-ion battery storage system to houses equipped with fuel cell units and photovoltaic systems.

The houses receiving the new model will be two (expected) of 22 houses in the low-carbon town Ecolife Square Mishima Kiyozumi, which are subdivision lots for sale in Mishima-shi, Shizuoka Prefecture (the former site of the Mishima facility of Shizuoka Gas). The land readjustment and development is scheduled to start in April 2010, housing construction in August 2010, and occupancy in March 2011. The project has also been positioned as a “Challenge 25 Regional Development Project,” a campaign promoted by the Ministry of the Environment. Through the model project of Japan, ITOCHU will contribute to the realization of the environmentally advanced city plan set out by Mishima-shi.

For the project, lithium-ion batteries made by EnerDel Inc. will be installed in the battery storage system, the spec of which are almost the same as batteries installed in electric vehicles in the Joint Demonstration Project on Low Carbon Transportation System Using Clean Energy in Tsukuba-shi, for stationary applications. The remote battery monitoring function that has been developed for the joint demonstration project will be also added to the battery storage system.

ITOCHU has been seeking to build a business model for the secondary use of lithium-ion batteries for vehicle use. Specifically, it has installed battery storage systems in a convenience store and a gas station as part of the Joint Demonstration Project on Low Carbon Transportation System Using Clean Energy in Tsukuba-shi, as well as in Klevia Futagotamagawa (Setagaya-ku, Tokyo), an apartment building developed and sold by ITOCHU Property Development, Ltd. The installation of a battery storage system in houses, as announced today, will be the fourth business model for the secondary use of vehicle-use lithium-ion batteries. ITOCHU will remotely monitor the information of storage batteries in all projects above. Based on the collected and analyzed data, it will aim to optimize the battery storage system to roll out the business models to convenience stores, gas stations, apartment buildings and houses on a massive scale in the future.