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A massive increase of installation of photovoltaic,

wind generation and other renewable energy
sources is strongly promoted by governments and
agencies as an alternative to fossil fuels around the
world. Japanese government is forecasting to reduce
the GHG emission in the country increasing the
generation capacity of photovoltaic to 28GW by
2020 and 53GW by 2030.

Renewable sources have the big advantage to be
CO2 free but it may be a big challenge to integrate a
large amount of renewable sources to the existing
electric power systems. Difficulties and challenges
associated with the renewable energy sources are
mainly related to the location of the generation and
to the fluctuation of the power production.
Regarding the Japanese power system, three main
problems are expected: the first is the impact of
photovoltaic production on the voltage regulation in
the low voltage distribution network; the second is
the utilization or control of the excess of power
production from renewable energy sources in some
periods of the year; the third is the impact of
renewable sources output fluctuation on the
frequency and the correlated costs of ancillary
services. Smart grid is a solution to the challenges
associated to the integration of large quantity of
renewable sources.

In this panel the authors present the test facilities
that Mitsubishi Electric is constructing to promote
the research and development of smart grid
technologies.

The facilities are located in three production sites in
Amagasaki, Ofuna and Wakayama respectively. At
the Amagasaki site, a 4MW photovoltaic system
divided in several size subsystems, several


rechargeable battery systems, several kinds of
power system stabilizers such as SVC and SVR,
smart meters, high speed charge stations for electric
vehicles, a hydro pump-storage generator simulator
device and other related equipments are installed to
evaluate all the challenges and the possible
solutions of distributed and fluctuating generation.
Advanced EMS/SCADA, DAS, and AMI dispatch
and control the assets and equipment through
several types of communication network In
addition a digital power system simulator will be
connected with system in order to simulate the
power system phenomena.

At Ofuna site a model house is under
construction. The facility in Ofuna is featuring a
residential photovoltaic system, new appliances for
all electricity house, a smart meter, a home-
gateway and other home network equipment.
Mitsubishi Electric Smart Grid for a Future Low
Carbon Society
M. Marmiroli, Member, IEEE, and Y. Tsukamoto, Member, IEEE
978-1-4577-2159-5/12/$31.00 2011 IEEE