Developing a Renewable Energy Management System That Reliably Connects Renewable Energy Sources to Customers

Overview

The D-Green series, a renewable electricity retail plan, which we began selling in FY2021, utilizes some of the largest renewable energy sources in Japan and offers solutions that meet our customers' needs.
To reliably connect the renewable energy sources to our customers, we are continually developing a system that we call the “renewable energy management system.”

What is the D-Green Series?

The D-Green series supplies electricity from renewable energy sources.1
In addition, by utilizing the environmental labeling value of non-fossil fuel certificates, we are able to offer a wide range of options to meet customer needs, such as “we want to achieve RE100 by using energy sources with additionality” and “we want to use our own renewable energy sources or nearby renewable energy sources.”

1. “Electricity from renewable energy sources” refers to the application of non-fossil fuel certificates (designated as renewable energy sources) to electricity generated by renewable energy sources without nuclear and other thermal sources.

D-Green series plan

Background of the System Construction
The sale of the D-Green series requires management of (1) renewable electricity and (2) non-fossil certificates.

(1) To sell power as electricity from renewable energy sources, it is necessary to ensure that the amount of electricity generated by renewable energy sources exceeds the amount of electricity used by customers 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, without any time transfer.
(2) Reflecting the needs of each customer and the latest institutional systems, non-fossil fuel certificates must be categorized by attributes, such as power source type and power generation period, and linked in units of 1 kWh.

Because the above management requires huge amounts of data and complex rules, we are developing a renewable energy management system as a business infrastructure solution

Overview of the renewable energy management system

System Development Method
The renewable energy electricity retail business is characterized by rapid changes in the business environment, such as changes in systems and the emergence of new customer needs. It is essential for us to keep up with such environmental changes in order to expand the sales scale for D-Green.
Therefore, instead of the typical waterfall method of system development, in which detailed plans are made before development is carried out, we use an agile method of development, which involves repeating the process from requirements definition to development in a short span of time, and have a system in place that allows us to respond quickly to changes in the environment.