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World Smart Energy Week 2016 kicked off at Tokyo’s Big Sight on March 2-4. It covers nine major exhibitions, including PV EXPO and PV System EXPO 2016. There are exhibitors from 31 countries and 1,430 companies, becoming Japan’s largest PV exhibition. From the increasing number of booth and content of PV systems, we can see that the PV system market is still full of potential in Japan.
EnergyTrend visited PV EXPO 2016 and found out that the number of booth is slightly reduced from 2015, but that for PV system EXPO has increased, showing the increasing importance of downstream products in the Japanese market. Meanwhile, most manufacturers are prepared for lower FiT and proposed a variety of residential integrated solutions. For example: Sharp’s ZEH (Zero-Energy House) and Panasonic’s Smart HEMS (Home Energy Management System). Overall, Japan will focus on residential and small-scale PV systems. High-efficient & lightweight products as well as modules with different shapes for rooftops have high visibility as well.
Overview
World Smart Energy Week 2016, held by Reed Exhibitors Japan, covers nine different energy exhibitions: 12th FC EXPO, 9th PV EXPO, 7th PV System EXPO, 7th Battery Japan, 6th ECO House & ECO Building EXPO, 6th Smart Grid EXPO, 4th Wind EXPO, 2nd energy liberalization EXPO, and 1st Biomass EXPO.
On the opening ceremony on March 2nd, Tad Ishizumi, President of REED Exhibition, said that REED has held the World Smart Energy Week since 2005 and now they have nine major exhibitions. They even came up with Smart Grid EXPO and Biomass EXPO last and this year. Their hard effort in the past twelve years have allowed the World Smart Energy Week to completely take over Tokyo’s Big Sight this year and became one of the global top three renewable energy exhibitions.
Ishizumi indicated that there will be a total of 80,000 exhibitors this year, including 7,500 international figures. The accumulated exhibitors may surpass 100 million for the World Smart Energy Week. This year, the market value created from the exhibition is estimated to reach ¥ 7.7 billion and ¥ 1,850 million for B-2-B cases.
The sponsor pointed out that the renewable energy market, including PV, wind energy, and biomass, will keep expanding, stimulating the demand for energy storage and power control systems. Meanwhile, the world will focus more on smart grid and house technologies. Japan will officially launch energy liberalization in April this year. In other words, the exhibition is a grand occasion for renewable energy power generation, storage and monitoring technologies, as well as energy liberalization.
The exhibition carries out 227 related seminars and speeches. Professions from the PV industry, government, and academic field have been invited to speak at the seminars.