Nissan Motor Co., Ltd. and 4R Energy have been honored by the Association for Resilience Japan for their efforts to promote electrification, including the use of electric cars as emergency power sources during natural disasters.
The companies today received a Best Resilience Award in the business and industry category of the association’s 2020 Japan Resilience Awards.
The award recognizes the Blue Switch program started by Nissan in May 2018. The program promotes the use of electric vehicles to address issues related to disaster prevention, energy management, climate change, tourism, and population declines. In the past two years, more than 8 million households in Japan have experienced power outages due to natural disasters.
Repurposing used electric-car batteries
As part of the efforts to boost resilience, 4R Energy has developed a stationary battery by repurposing used 40-kilowatt hour batteries from Nissan LEAF electric cars. The company, a joint venture between Nissan and Sumitomo Corp., has also developed a new product that allows customers to use electricity stored in EVs through V2X (Vehicle-to-Everything) technology.
Trials to test operations using renewable energy stored in the stationary batteries have taken place at select 7-Eleven convenience stores in Japan’s Kanagawa Prefecture since September. The new V2X product, jointly developed by 4R Energy and IKS Co., Ltd., will come to market by the end of fiscal year 2020.
Nissan plans to further expand collaboration with local governments and companies through the Blue Switch program, and to continue promoting advanced energy management along with 4R Energy.
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