Kokusai
Kogyo Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of leading solar and green community developer
Japan Asia Group (JAG), jointly with Yamaman Co., Ltd. has launched a new
service that helps customers, in this case residents of Yukarigaoka1 with home
energy management systems (HEMS) 2, find the cheapest and/or most suitable
electricity supplier for their needs. This service was launched in June 2015
and comes as Japan is readying itself for deregulation of the electricity
supply market. Proprietary
technology of Kokusai Kogyo (patent no. 5717113), the service utilizes the
actual energy consumption data obtained by the HEMS to pinpoint which power
utility will provide the optimal service. While other companies provide similar
services, so far, it seems, these are only based on monitoring via interview surveys.
Yukarigaoka
developer, Yamaman, with the help of Kokusai Kogyo, is now providing its
customers, who purchased houses with HEMS at Yukarigaoka (since 2011), with
detailed diagnostic results about which electricity utility plan will be most
economical for their circumstances, based on their actual energy usage data
obtained via the HEMS. This after-sales support service is one way Yamaman is
striving to maximize the effectiveness of its home energy management systems.
In
April 2016, Japan will deregulate retail of electricity to households and small-scale
business operators, a 7.5 trillion yen (approximately US 61 billion dollar)
market. Opening up of this market—which when combined with the already
liberalized retail electricity market to large-scale users, equates to a market
of over 20 trillion yen—to new entrants is expected to lead to severe competition
for customers. This is also expected to further increase competition in the
large-scale user electricity retail market and the renewable energy generation
market.
At
Japan Asia Group, and
Kokusai Kogyo in particular, we are investing significant effort to strengthen our
range of renewable energy, energy saving, and electricity retail market-focused
services and solutions to ensure we can make the most of the opportunity
presented by this market liberalization. Of course, one aspect of this effort
will be investigating how best to expand this initiative at Yurigaoka based on
actual field trials over the next two months—to the wider market.
