Tohoku Electric Power Company has deployed the battery energy storage system (BESS) in a power transmission substation in Minami-Soma, on Japan’s east coast in Fukushima prefecture, as part of the "Minami-Soma Substation Project to Verify the Improvement of Supply-Demand Balance with Large-capacity Power Storage Systems″. The BESS will manage and improve the balance of renewable energy supply and demand, which is subject to weather-influenced output fluctuations, by storing surplus renewable electricity when supply exceeds demand and releasing stored electricity at times of high demand.

The current project is the second in which Toshiba has supplied a 40 MW class BESS to Tohoku Electric Power Company. This order follows high evaluations of the technical performance of a 40 MW / 20 MWh delivered in 2014 for a Tohoku Electric Power Company’s Nishi-Sendai Project, in Miyagi prefecture, north of Fukushima, to regulate frequency changes caused by power output fluctuations.