TEPCO Ventures and

Inertia
Measurement Technology
TEPCO Ventures, Inc.
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TEPCO’s Historical Coverage in Japan

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TEPCO Company Structure
 TEPCO shifted to a holding company structure in April 2016
 Since 1st of July, Business Innovation Taskforce has restructured
as TEPCO Ventures, Inc. 100% shared by TEPCO Holdings
Business
Innovation Taskforce

Support Functions + Nuclear, Renewable, R&D

Fuel & Thermal Power Transmission & Retail

Generation Distribution

TEPCO Ventures,
Inc.
©TEPCO Ventures, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
 3
TEPCO Ventures Roll
 Creating “ECO-System” utilizes TEPCO Group technologies and
assets, collaboration with Venture companies
Create Business Plan
（Seed Round)

TEPCO Ventures

Creating
Idea
New
Sourcing
ECO System Business Development
TEPCO Group and (Series A round)
(EP, PG) Values
Collaboration
Companies
（Venture Companies, Other
Industries Co.）

Return the Value

to TEPCO Group Expanding the Business
(Series B round)
©TEPCO Ventures, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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TEPCO and Reactive Technologies
 TEPCO has a strong relationship with Reactive Technologies who
have created a number of industry-leading solutions, such as inertia
measurement
 TEPCO and Reactive have started a pilot project which aims to
measure synthetic inertia on an island in Japan

 UK & Finland based energy tech

company  South from Tokyo
 95+patents granted and 75+  Isolated grid with
patents pending Main island
 An R&D team comprised of ex  Total Demand
Nokia experts
about 2.0MW-
 Three key investors: Ingenious,
Octopus Investments and RES
4.0MW
 Total RE about
1.0MW

An island in Japan

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Understanding of Vietnam Energy Market
 Vietnam RE targets are gradually increasing according to REVISED
PDP VII by MoIT
 High RE penetration means low conventional generator such as Gas
and Coal. Inertia volume would be much more uncertain in the
future.
13.8% 5.6%
6%, 18GW 2.5% 32TWh
2%, 6GW 1.1% 10TWh
kW 1.65GW kWh 3TWh

Amount of RE Amount of RE
(Wind PV) 2020 2025 2030 (Wind PV) 2020 2025 2030

Source: Viet Nam’s Power Development Plan, Ministry of Industry and Trade, April 2017
©TEPCO Ventures, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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Risk of Renewable Energy Uptake
 As the proportion of renewables increases, inertia will decrease
 Inertia estimate error will be much higher due to lack of visibility of
how much renewable generation is integrated on the Grid
 Grid destabilization risk and balancing costs will be much higher

 Soaring balancing costs

 Reduced ability to integrate

renewable generation

 Increased risk of blackouts

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What if inertia measurement is not addressed?
 For island grids it is critical for managing frequency and for highly
interconnected grids an understanding of regional inertia is
important for managing the risk of islanding and grid-wide
oscillations
Benefits of accurate inertia measurement

• Better System Security

• Understanding regional inertia and the risk
of the electricity system ‘islanding’
• Volatile frequency can lead to loss of
embedded generation and large generation,
understanding leads to better services to
cope with this frequency

• Balancing & Capital Cost. To support low levels

of inertia, grids can purchase new balancing
services (e.g. fast frequency response) or invest
in capital (e.g. synchronous condensers), costs
which can be optimized through better
measurement

• Integration of renewables. Ultimately the re-

positioning of units to resolve constraints or to
increase levels of inertia will lead to a reduction in
the level of renewables on the system.
South Australia islanding in 2016 & Europe islanding in 2006

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Inertia Measurement Solution
 Reactive partnered with National Grid UK and delivered direct and
highly accurate inertia measurements – a World First
 This was achieved by installing Reactive’s extensible measurement
units (XMUs) on the Grid that sent data to the cloud, which in turn,
created powerful and actionable analytics

©TEPCO Ventures, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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Measurement Data Accuracy
 Using Reactive’s signaling and measurement technology in a blind
test, inertia has been directly measured on National Grid UK’s
network

©TEPCO Ventures, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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Inertia Estimates vs Measurement

understand inertia
Enough data to
Transmission

Quantifiable
Distribution
Continuous

Additional

accuracy
patterns
Inertia

insight
results

inertia
Method
Summing inertia
across all
synchronous
generators
✓ ✓    
Calculating
RoCoF during
large frequency  ✓ ✓ ✓  
excursions

Reactive’s real-
time inertia
measurement ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
Reactive Technologies’ patented method

©TEPCO Ventures, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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Inertia Measurement Benefits

 Lower energy balancing procurement costs in an increasingly

volatile energy environment
 Significantly improve risk identification as system inertia decreases
 Increase amount of renewable generation that can be integrated
and utilised safely

GridMetrix User Interface

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 Thank you

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