Monthly Report

Fantasista delays first BESS project commissioning to Aug. 2025, has 21 more under development

September 23, 2024
Fantasista BESS
Fantasista is in the process of developing 22 BESS projects totaling 179.08MWh. (Image: Fantasista)

Fantasista delayed the commissioning of its first grid-scale BESS project from the originally scheduled December 2024 to August 2025, the Tokyo-based real estate company announced on September 20, 2024. The company also provided an update on its BESS project pipeline overall.

The first project, which will be operated by fantasista battery1 LLC, a wholly-owned subsidiary of fantasista’s consolidated subsidiary NCMAXWORLD, will be located in Ota City, Gunma Prefecture, in the Tokyo TSO area. While construction on the project, to be done by Suzuka Denko, was supposed to start in April of this year, it was delayed to December 1, 2024, due to revisions in equipment selection.

Accounting for the delay, construction on the 2MW/8.14MWh project is now expected to finish at the end of April 2025 with a handover to the operator scheduled for the end of the following month. Trial operation is expected in June and July 2025 followed by the start of commercial operation on August 1, 2025.

In addition to the above project, fantasista has another 21 currently under development, all with 8.14MWh storage capacity and, presumably, 2MW output capacity. The company has already acquired or signed purchase contract for the land required to build 14 of those projects. It expects to acquire the land required for the remaining seven projects in October 2024.

While the company has submitted a grid connection request for all 21 projects already, it only received a response to one of the requests, for a project to be located in Nara Prefecture in the Kansai TSO area, so far.

Of the total of 22 projects the company is developing, including the one in Gunma Prefecture, eight are in the Tokyo TSO area, six in the Hokuriku area, five in the Kansai area, and one each in the Tohoku, Chugoku, and Chubu areas.

With the processing of grid connection requests being a major bottleneck in the development of BESS projects, the government is currently considering introducing a new type of grid connection contract that would speed up the process in exchange for the BESS operators agreeing not to charge their batteries at selected times of the day.

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