Sale of residential fuel-cell cogeneration systems (ENEFARMs) will start in this year.
Four major city gas companies and two major oil companies, which will be distributors of ENEFARMs#1, issued a joint statement, including cooperation by the companies for the sale and spread of ENEFARMs, before actual start of ENEFARM sales.
A web site will be formed and co-used by those companies for the purposes of PR and sale promotion.
The web site is here.
#1: ENEFARM: see “news item No. 78 in News 2008-3”
The price of the ENEFARM ranges from 3,000, 000 yen to 3,500,000 yen#2.
The government subsidy is the half of the price of a purchased ENEFARM (the upper limit of the subsidy is 1,400,000 yen).
The customer will save 50,000 yen to 60,000 yen per year in gas and electricity charges.
#2: 1 USD = about 90 yen.
The ENEFARM manufactured by Panasonic or Ebara-Ballard is exampled to provide easy understanding.
Power generation unit output = 300W to 1kW
Hot-water supply unit capacity = 200L
Retail price = 3,460,000 yen
Panasonic will start the sale of ENEFARM in May this year,
and Ebara-Ballard will start it in July.
In case where a purchaser receives a maximum of subsidy of 1,400,000 yen from the government, he/she must pay about 2,000,000 yen
With further technology development of the fuel cells and increase of the number of purchased ENEFARMs, the price will lower soon while depicting a sharply descending curve.
The ENEFARM is a next-generation clean energy generator having a mission to escape from the fossil-fuel field, and has attractive features that are not found in the conventional equipment.
Examples of them are:
1) CO2 emission is considerably reduced (about 40% or higher).
2) Overall energy efficiency is very high (70% or higher).
3) At least the necessary amounts of electricity and hot water are secured
even at the disaster area (if the primary fuel is LPG or petroleum and ENEFARM itself is not damaged).
4) No noisy sound is generated.
5) Others
We are now requested to tackle with the global warming issue.
The ENEFARM market is a virgin soil. And it is large even if it is limited to the domestic market. I hope that the number of purchased ENEFARMs will steeply increase.
Many sales approaches to sell ENEFARMs have actually started.
SECOM Co., Ltd., a major security service company in Japan, is plan to sell ENEFARMs. The rental-sales method is employed. The rental fee is about 20,000 yen/month. Asahi Kasei Homes Ltd. will sell single family houses combined with ENEFARMs.
ENEOS will build a new sales network for selling ENEFARMs on the basis of the established sales network for gasoline and LPG
Tokyo Gas has a plan to sell 42,000 ENEFARMs till 2013.
Incidentally, a target number of ENEFARMs to be sold in this year is about 5,000.
The Japanese government worked out a policy to list up environment products and parts and to impose no duty on them.
SwedenHouse Co., Ltd. launched a new model of single family house combined with a hybrid energy generator including an ENEFARM and a solar power generator.
HONDA seems to determine the development of a hybrid energy generator designed for home use, which is a combination of a residential FC cogenerator and a solar energy generator. The HONDA’s final target is to establish a distributed power supply system in which electricity and hydrogen, which are to be supplied to FCV and fuel cell energy generator, are both generated and stored in each home.
This article has been prepared on the basis of news reported by major medias in Japan.
