United Wind partners with TEPCO to develop wind projects in Japan
North America’s first distributed wind leasing company, United Wind, has partnered with Japan’s largest electric utility, Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, Inc. (TEPCO), to introduce its unique wind leasing program to the country’s fast-growing distributed wind energy market.
The partnership includes a recently completed growth equity investment by TEPCO into United Wind. The two companies are also planning to jointly develop distributed wind projects in Japan starting in 2017.
according to United Wind CEO and Founder Russell Tencer, prior to the TEPCO partnership, the company has also recently closed its Series B growth equity round. This included investments from global energy leaders Total and Statoil.
“Japan’s distributed wind market has the potential to be significant in scale, thanks to an aggressive small wind feed-in-tariff (FIT), which works well with our leasing model,”Tencer added.
“Japan faces tremendous energy production challenges in the near future and, TEPCO is committed to meeting those challenges by expanding access to renewable sources of power generation,” said Hirokazu Yamaguchi, Executive General Manager, Global Innovation & Investments at TEPCO.
“United Wind’s innovative leasing model will help us to facilitate distributed wind energy adoption on a large scale and we are eager to partner with United Wind’s team to that end,”Yamaguchi also noted.
In response to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in 2011, Japan’s FIT was established in 2013 in order to incentivize a diverse mix of renewable energy projects. At the end of 2015, there were 312 small wind projects representing close to 4.6 MW (megawatt) of capacity approved for the FIT.
In 2015, wind turbines of up to 20 kW (kilowatt) received ¥55 (US$0.51) per kWh (kilowatt-hour) and turbines of 20 kW and greater received ¥22 (US$0.21) per kWh (METI 2015). Japan currently has an estimated capacity of approximately 280 GW (gigawatt) of onshore wind power.
United Wind is one of the world’s leading distributed wind project developer. The company’s proprietary wind analytics platform and first-in-the-industry leasing model allow its customers to utilize on-site wind resources to reduce their monthly electricity bill without any upfront costs.
To date, United Wind has raised over US$225 million in project finance capital from investors such as Forum Equity Partners, US Bank, New York Green Bank, GSG Financial, and Pacific Rim Capital to deploy its WindLease model throughout the US.