Chubu Electric Power Miraiz will offtake non-fossil certificates (NFCs) from the soon-to-be-repowered Aoyama Kogen Wind Farm and sell them through a 20-year multi-offtaker virtual PPA to four companies including IKO Nippon Thompson, MUFG Bank, Merck, and Yamaha, the company announced on January 7, 2025.
According to Chubu Electric Power Miraiz’s statement, IKO Nippon Thompson will use the NFCs at its Gifu Factory Complex, MUFG Bank at its Nagoya and Shikatsu buildings, Merck at its Shizuoka Branch, and Yamaha at its headquarters in Shizuoka.
IKO Nippon Thompson said it will offtake approximately 5GWh worth of NFCs per year of the 50GWh the power plant is expected to generate overall. Breakdown of how the remaining volume will be split among the three other companies and potential other offtakers has not been disclosed.
The NFC supply through the PPA is expected to begin after March 2027, when the power plant’s repowering is expected to be completed. Repowering work, which will include reducing the number of turbines from the current 20 to seven while maintaining the current 15MW capacity, is expected to start in March 2025.
Aoyama Kogen Wind Power Plant, located in Tsu and Iga cities in Mie Prefecture, was commissioned in March 2003. It is owned by a joint venture between C-Tech, a Chubu EPCO Group company, and the two cities. The joint venture also operates the 80MW New Aoyama Kogen Wind Power Plant in the same area, which was commissioned in 2016 and 2017.
While the power plant’s feed-in-tariff (FIT) contract for Aoyama Kogen Wind Power Plant expired in 2023, the repowered power plant was FIT-certified at the end of FY2020. The FIT offered for repowered onshore wind power plants at the time was 16 yen per kWh as opposed to 18 yen per kWh for greenfield projects. With plans to monetize the power plant using a virtual PPA, the asset will need to be converted to the feed-in-premium (FIP) scheme.
The Japan Energy Hub PPA database shows that IKO Nippon Thompson and Merck signed PPAs previously. Among others, the former signed a virtual PPA with Clean Energy Connect in 2023 and the latter a 2.7MW solar PPA with Chubu Electric Power Miraiz in 2024.
