Toshiba Corporation has announced it will partner with a German real estate company to install solar energy systems on family apartment buildings under a self-consumption model.
The company intends entering the market in March next year. It will initially install 3 MW of photovoltaic (PV) power to serve 750 apartments owned by GAGFAH, Germany’s largest real-estate company, in Villingen-Schwenningen and Ostfildern, in Baden-Wuerttemberg.
Toshiba’s German branch will install the solar panels and sell the electricity generated to residents at a lower rate than other electric utilities. At night, or during cloudy weather, the company will buy power from the wholesale market and sell it to customers at the same rate as electricity from the solar power system.
Recent deregulation of the German energy market allows independent power providers to participate and deliver electricity directly to consumers. Toshiba hopes to expand their new business model and increase capacity from 3 MW to 100 MW by 2016
“Although Germany introduced a feed-in tariff system for renewable energy in 2000, and while the adoption of photovoltaic (PV) power has increased, consumers have recently seen higher electricity bills every year, along with a lower feed in price for surplus solar power,” says part of a statement from the company.
“Toshiba is responding with a new on-site consumption model that will operate independently of the feed-in tariff system, and that is expected to reduce burden on the regional gird and the environment.”
The company will also diversify into other aspects of solar power generation in conjunction with GAGFAH going forward, installing storage batteries for back-up power at the apartment sites, along with a micro-energy management system, or μEMS.
Toshiba’s goal is to develop its new on-site solar consumption model within Germany and then expand it to a global level.
