Last year, ahead of the third edition of Energy Storage Summit Asia in 2025, the developer gave an interview on a similar theme of lessons learned in Japan that could be broadly applied in earlier-stage markets across Southeast Asia and the wider Asia-Pacific (APAC) region.
At that time, in Q3 2025, Mahdi Behrengrad said that making money from energy storage in Japan could often be a difficult and “brutal” business, noting that high past revenues from opportunities like ancillary services were no indication of continued good fortune.
Speaking last week, the Pacifico Energy energy storage lead said the message is even clearer today.
“Japan has very interesting opportunities regarding the size [of the market], the inherent need for energy storage, the security stability it brings, while showing clear pitfalls that Southeast Asian nations should carefully watch,” Behrengrad said.
After an initial boom in development and a wave of excitement, “everything has become more strict, rather than more accommodating” in the space of about three or four years, beginning with the regulatory perception of storage.
