ITOCHU Corporation (Headquartered in Minato-ku, Tokyo; Keita Ishii, President & COO; hereinafter “ITOCHU”) announced today that it has reached an agreement regarding the participation of five new shareholders in its subsidiary GridShare Japan Corporation (Headquartered in Tokyo; Masashi Nishio, Representative Director and CEO; hereinafter “GSJ”).
The five participating companies are, OMRON Social Solutions Co., Ltd., Kyushu Electric Power Co., Inc., Chubu Electric Power Miraiz Co., Inc., Tokyu Land Corporation, and Lunar Energy Inc. (U.S.). Together with these partners, ITOCHU aims to accelerate the expansion of GSJ’s distributed energy platform service(“gridshare service”).^*1

In 2018, ITOCHU acquired the exclusive domestic sales rights in Japan for the “gridshare” service through its investment in Moixa Technology, Inc. (currently Lunar Energy Limited, hereinafter “Lunar UK”).^*2 In the same year, ITOCHU established GSJ and launched the sales of the Smart Star, a residential energy storage systems(ESS) equipped with gridshare. Since its launch, GSJ has established a platform with approximately 40,000 units connected.

Through this new partnership, ITOCHU will consolidate the knowledge and expertise of these leading partners in the industry and promote and build on the gridshare service to position itself as a common platform for distributed energy control, expanding beyond the Smart Star.
The following initiatives are planned to further solidify its presence:

　1. Expand the distributed energy resources connected to the gridshare service, extending from storage batteries, electric heat pump water heaters and electric vehicles.
　2. Enter the capacity and balancing markets through the collective control of distributed energy resources, and create new business opportunities by collaborating with major players in the industry.
　3．Promote regional power exchange (P2P power trading)^*3 through the optimal utilization of power within the common platform.

Under ITOCHU’s management policy “The Brand-New Deal: Profit Opportunities are Shifting Downstream”, ITOCHU will continue to expand its business sectors by developing and transforming downstream businesses close to consumers. Through this new formation of GSJ, ITOCHU aims to contribute to the realization of a society that circulates green power by promoting energy management that enables the more effective utilization of distributed energy storage.

Reference Below: Example screenshot of the software for managing distributed energy resources connected to the GridShare platform.