How ITOCHU customers save more and stay powered through storms

ITOCHU, one of Japan's largest trading companies, wanted to do more with its Smart Star home battery system. By partnering with Lunar Energy, ITOCHU customers are now maximizing their savings and staying powered through extreme weather. 

‍The challenge

Home batteries are only as useful as the software running them. ITOCHU had deployed tens of thousands of Smart Star batteries across Japan, but customers weren't getting the full benefit with their standard default operating modes, and had no reliable protection against blackouts. With rising electricity prices and increasingly severe storms, ITOCHU needed a smarter way to manage its fleet, at scale. 

The solution

That's exactly what Lunar delivered. Lunar's Gridshare Platform takes the complexity out of managing home batteries at scale. Our software platform builds personalized daily plans for every home based on energy habits, weather forecasts, and electricity tariffs, so each battery does exactly what's right for that household, on that specific day. The result: maximum savings for the customer and reliable backup power when the grid goes down.

When severe weather is on the way, our technology automatically charges batteries in affected areas to 100% in anticipation of any potential outage; no manual intervention needed. The battery is kept at full charge as long as the weather alerts continue. Once the threat passes, devices return to optimization mode on their own.

ITOCHU customers stay in control throughout. The Gridshare Japan App, recently relaunched, puts everything in one place: solar generation, battery status, grid imports, and a combined view of savings across all sources. Customers know exactly what their system is doing. And why.

The results

Since 2018, Gridshare has operated as Japan's largest Edge DERMS platform — running AI-powered optimization across ITOCHU's fleet of 40,000 Smart Star residential batteries, delivering:

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What’s next 

As Japan's energy market evolved, a bigger opportunity emerged: using aggregated asset fleets to support the grid through virtual power plant (VPP) programs. Lunar is now delivering these services to six of the ten major utilities in Japan, including TEPCO, supporting the country's efforts to build a cleaner grid. 

The expansion doesn't stop at batteries. In early 2026, Lunar launched direct control of Daikin EcoCute hot water tanks, found in more than 10 million Japanese homes. The same AI that optimizes batteries using tariff data and weather forecasts now applies to an entirely new device category — unlocking flexible load for utilities and smaller bills for customers.

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