Next Kraftwerke and Toshiba Energy Systems & Solutions Corporation (Toshiba ESS) today (Nov 3) announced the launch of their joint venture. "Next Kraftwerke Toshiba Corporation" is a Virtual Power Plant (VPP) as a service provider that enables third parties in Japan to set up their own VPP.

Following their Memorandum of Understanding of October 2019, the two companies are now taking the next step in their cooperation. The new company aims at enabling others to provide balancing services for the owners of renewable energy assets and aggregators by using VPP technology. This approach helps third parties to mitigate imbalance risks, optimizes trading, and enhances customer profits in the electricity spot market and control reserve market. The system used is NEMOCS, a Software-as-a-Service solution developed and used by Next Kraftwerke. It is designed to enable operators of various decentralized energy resources to monitor, manage, and remotely dispatch their systems.

The joint venture is located in Kawasaki, Japan. The new company's primary focus is on the Japanese market. In addition, the company will consider expansion by leveraging international sales channels of both companies.

The co-owned joint venture was founded to support the energy industry in Japan to prepare for the upcoming changes in the market. Markets for control reserve will open in 2021; in 2022, the government will introduce a new trading scheme for renewables as well as balancing responsibility for renewable energies. Alexander Krautz, one of the new directors of the joint venture, comments: "Next Kraftwerke Toshiba Corporation combines our expertise in establishing and operating a VPP for more than 10 years and Toshiba ESS' deep knowledge of the Japanese market. With all the pending changes in the Japanese market, it is important for energy companies to start preparing. With our services, this is exactly what we are offering to do for our future clients. We are happy to have such a strong partner to start this new business with."

Next Kraftwerke operates one of the largest Virtual Power Plants in Europe. The Next Pool networks around 9 9 6 0 decentralized energy producing and energy consuming units that are linked together via a digital platform, which enables each one to be managed by an in house control system. With a total linked energy capacity of over 8 5 00 MW, Next Kraftwerke makes a substantial contribution to stabi- lizing fluctuation in the grid. In addition , the Cologne based company optimizes energy production and consumption of each of its customers with price markers, and trades their power 24/7 on various Eu- ropean markets, such as EPEX and EEX.