
Omron Field Engineering and Tokyo Century launched a service that helps high-voltage feed-in-tariff (FIT) solar power plant owners eliminate curtailment risk, the two companies announced on November 19, 2024.
Kyushu Chikuden Service LLC, a joint venture between the two companies that operates the new service, offers to pay asset owners fixed fees amounting to what the asset owners would have been paid through the FIT scheme had there been zero curtailment. “By compensating for the FIT electricity sales loss caused by curtailment, we guarantee income equivalent to that of FIT,” said the statement.
To do so, the joint venture converts contracted assets to the feed-in-premium (FIP) scheme, which pays a variable premium on top of revenues generated through the sale of power and renewable energy certificates, and adds storage batteries to the assets at no cost to customers. It then trades the generated power with the aim of increasing the assets’ revenue compared to what they would have generated had they stayed under the fixed fee per kWh-FIT scheme.
As part of the joint venture, Omron Field Engineering is responsible for FIT-to-FIP conversion support, addition of battery storage to contracted assets, and power trading while Tokyo Century is responsible for asset management.
The new service is being introduced amid increasing renewable output curtailment across Japan and the government’s efforts to incentivize conversion of assets from FIT to FIP and installation of storage batteries through measures such as equipment cost subsidies, curtailment priority order revision, and improved conditions for co-locating storage with FIP power plants. The October 2024 issue of The Japan Power Industry Executive explores the incentives in detail.