Japanese utility Kyushu halts grid access for new renewable energy plants

Japanese utility company Kyushu Electric Power Co., which provides power to the Island of Kyushu, southern Japan, announced that it will suspend grid access for new renewable energy installations. According to Bloomberg, which cites a company’s press release, the grid access will be suspended until Kyushu Electric will have assessed how much more renewable capacity is able to handle. The company stressed that this decision will not affect existing projects.



In August 2013, Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF). reported that Power grids in southern Japan were close to capacity for solar and wind power projects due to the rapid expansion of renewable energy. At the time, Kyushu Electric and the utility Chugoku Electric Power Co. each had less than 1 GW of available grid capacity for solar or wind power projects after deducting existing and approved capacity. Other regions of Japan have been struggling with grid congestion for some time now due to an explosion in PV development caused by the launch of Japan’s generous FIT program in July 2012. Hokkaido Electric Power Co. (HEPCO), the sole utility on Japan’s northernmost island of Hokkaido, has been investigating ways to fix grid congestion on the island because it now has more proposed PV capacity than its grid can handle.



In June 2013, Bloomberg reported that developers had already proposed 1,568 MW of PV projects over 2 MW in size for Hokkaido. In an effort to avoid potential congestion of the grid, however, HEPCO said it would allow just 400 MW of solar power projects on the island. HEPCO had since announced a 60 MWh energy storage project to help stabilize the grid. A 20 MWh energy storage project has also been announced for the Tohoku Region, located on Honshu, Japan’s largest island.