Blackrock-owned developer Akaysha and Japanese conglomerate Itochu have entered into a strategic alliance to develop battery storage projects in Japan.

The pair have entered into a strategic alliance agreement to collaborate in the area of utility-scale energy storage, they announced last week (8 September).

The alliance will see Akaysha and the Itochu Corporation promote the development of energy storage projects in Japan and also co-operate to expand the activity overseas, including in Australia.

Japanese financial paper Nikkei reported that the two companies aim to develop battery storage projects at 10-20 locations mainly in Japan, while Itochu is targeting up to 20 large-scale projects in Japan by 2030.

Itochu is aiming to grow the energy storage business in Japan to 1GWh of capacity and US$678 million (JPY100 billion) in value, capturing 10-20% of the domestic market share.

Itochu Corporation is one of Japan’s seven major sogo shosha conglomerates with specialisms in textiles, machinery, metals and minerals, energy, food and general products. The firm is already a leading seller of residential energy storage systems in Japan while this year partnered with a utility in Osaka to deploy an 11MW/23MWh in the prefecture.

Akaysha is an Australia-based battery storage developer owned by the world’s largest asset manager Blackrock. It is most well-known for the Waratah Super Battery, a 850MW/1680MWh battery energy storage system (BESS) in New South Wales, which has been described as the largest single-phase BESS project in the world.

Itochu has installed over 600MWh of energy storage products to-date while Akaysha is targeting 10GWh of energy storage projects.

Source: Energy Storage News